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Baghdad ready for parliamentary vote due on 27

BAGHDAD: The Iraqi capital is ready for its part in the nationwide parliamentary election due to take place on March 27, the governor of Baghdad said on Friday.

"The province has completed all the measures needed for the elections of the National Assembly," the official Iraqi News Agency quoted Governor Abdul-Wahid Shannan as saying.

Shannan said 3,145,150 people are eligible to vote in Baghdad, where 136 candidates are competing for 62 seats in parliament. Each candidate has the same number of pictures, placards and election leaflets, he added.

Among the contenders for a Baghdad seat is President Saddam Hussein's eldest son Uday, 35, standing for the first time in a parliamentary election, Iraqi newspapers reported recently.

More than 8.5 million Iraqis are expected to vote in the election, choosing from among 522 candidates for 220 seats in the National Assembly, Justice Minister Shabib al-Maliki said earlier this month.

Thirty seats in the northern provinces will remain vacant. Iraq has had no control over the north of the country since 1991, when local Kurds rebelled after Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War, and Western powers enforced a no-fly zone to keep government forces out of the area.

"Thirty seats are allocated for the Autonomy region, which lives under exceptional circumstances as a result of the foreign presence which denies citizens the chance to vote freely," Maliki told a March 14 news conference.

In the last parliamentary election in March 1996, all 160 candidates of Saddam's ruling Baath party won seats, along with 60 independents.

Saddam then appointed 30 deputies to represent rebel Kurdish areas in northern Iraq, where no election took place.

Maliki said 324 Arab and other parliamentarians, journalists and other observers would be invited to monitor the election. "Election-supervising committees at polling stations will be chaired by judges known for their honesty and sincerity," he said.

All candidates have equal access to state-run media during campaigning for the election, he said.-Reuters