One of the best things about leaving town for the weekend is coming home to 681 unread items in Google Reader. Oy. I flagged a bunch of items that looked interesting, and I'll try to catch up on blogging them over the next few days.
The biggest news this weekend was the Iraqi parliament's long-overdue vote on a new election law. The law passed, setting the stage for parliamentary elections on Jan. 16, 2010.
The status of Kirkuk was the big issue that delayed the election law for weeks. Legislators agreed to use 2009 voter registration rolls for the province, a decision supported by Kurdish lawmakers. In a concession to Arab and Turkmen lawmakers, though, the election commission will have one year to review ballots from districts where the vote tally was "abnormally high."
This compromise is probably a recipe for months of open-ended controversy about the Kirkuk vote tally. But it also seems like the most reasonable compromise: Using old voter rolls could have prompted a harsh reaction from Kurdish lawmakers.
Iraq's election commission warned on Friday that it would not be able to meet that deadline. The commission says it needs 90 days to prepare elections; it only has 68.
It will probably spend the next three months warning that it cannot promise free and fair elections on the abbreviated timetable. But the elections will almost certainly go ahead as planned.
The new election law should also bring an end to the Pentagon's speculation that it might have to delay the timetable for withdrawing from Iraq.
All in all, this is a genuinely good piece of news. Then again: We always knew Iraq would eventually pass an election law. The bigger question is who gets elected under this law, and whether he can do anything to improve Iraqi governance.
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