Iraq's electoral committee says preliminary results show turnout from Sunday’s election was 41 percent. That's a record low in the post-Saddam Hussein era. The vote was marred by widespread apathy and a boycott by many of those who protested in late 2019.
The election was held months ahead of schedule as a concession to a youth-led popular uprising against corruption and mismanagement. But the vote wasand a boycott by many of the same young activists who thronged the streets of Baghdad and Iraq’s southern provinces in late 2019, calling for change and new elections.
Tens of thousands of people protested in late 2019 and early 2020, and were met by security forces firing live ammunition and tear gas. More than 600 people were killed and thousands injured within just a few months.Although authorities gave in and called the early elections, the death toll and the heavy-handed crackdown - as well as a string of targeted assassinations - prompted many protesters to later call for a boycott of the vote.
The election was the sixth held since the fall of Saddam Hussein after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Many were skeptical that independent candidates from the protest movement stood a chance against well-entrenched parties and politicians, many of them backed by powerful armed militias. Groups drawn from Iraq’s majority Shiite Muslim factions were expected to come out on top, with a tight race expected between the country’s influential Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and the Fatah Alliance, led by paramilitary leader Hadi al-Ameri.
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