About 7.5 million of Iraq’s 14.9 eligible million voters — a 51 percent turnout — cast ballots in Iraq’s provincial elections this weekend, the election commission said in preliminary results Sunday.

The turnout in some areas, such as Anbar province, was in stark contrast to provincial elections held in 2005, when violence and intimidation by al Qaeda in Iraq kept most residents from participating.

Fearing retribution from the terror group, only about 2 percent of eligible voters cast ballots that year in the province.

Faraj al-Haidari, the head of the Independent High Electoral Commission, called the turnout this year “very high” for provincial elections in any country.

These were, he said Sunday, the “most important elections in the history of Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein.”

Observers believe the provincial vote will be a gauge of the country’s political direction and a guide to how the parliamentary elections will turn out later this year.


Source: The CNN Wire