Elections are not a fleeting moment… they are the starting point of the state.
The debate about the role of elections in shaping the Iraqi state is repeated with every election cycle, as if we are facing an old question that is constantly renewed: If governments are made through understandings after the results are announced, do elections lose their meaning and with them the “voice of the state” is lost? The truth is that this question, although it seems logical at first glance, overlooks the essence of the political and social structure of Iraq.
Iraq is not a country with a single political, cultural, or social structure; rather, it is a country of components, where identities coexist, interests overlap, and social references are numerous.
In such structures, no single party can form a government on its own, neither by virtue of its electoral strength nor by virtue of social realities. Therefore, elections are not an end in themselves, but rather the foundation upon which legitimacy is built. Political agreements are the natural extension of election results, not their antithesis. Elections grant the right to representation, while agreements grant the possibility of governance. Without either, the state loses its balance: no ballot box without consensus can produce a stable authority, and no consensus without a ballot box can produce respected legitimacy.
In this context, describing elections as a “political ritual that produces no change” is a premature judgment. Change is not merely reflected in the form of government, but also in the way the state is governed, the nature of decisions, the distribution of power, and the extent to which society shifts from loyalty to a particular group to loyalty to the state. While it is true that forming Iraqi governments is a lengthy process requiring complex consultations, this is not evidence of the state's absence. Rather, it is part of the process of establishing a state that learns to manage pluralism instead of denying it. States where the majority imposes its rule without checks and balances quickly descend into civil conflict.
Iraq, however, chose a more difficult path: managing pluralism not as a burden, but as a reality upon which stability is built. The world does not view Iraq solely through the lens of election results, but also its ability to translate these results into independent decision-making at a time when the maps of power, energy, and alliances in the region are being redrawn. The real question that Iraq is being tested by today is not: Who wins? But: How is it governed? Democracy is not just a ballot box; it is a will translated into policies, and policies that become the identity of a nation. A state only speaks with its own voice when it possesses: political legitimacy from the ballot box, pragmatic legitimacy from consensus, and sovereign legitimacy from independent decision-making.
Iraq does not need a new winner as much as it needs a state that knows how to decide in its own name, not in the name of others. And this state will not be created without elections that determine who has the right to represent, understandings that determine who has the ability to govern, and institutions that determine who has the right to make decisions.
In conclusion, the voice of the state is not born from the moment the results are announced, but from the moment those who came to power through the ballot box decide to govern according to the dictates of the nation's conscience, not the desires of foreign powers. Only when representation transforms into will, will into decision, and decision into sovereignty can we say that the state has spoken. And it has spoken with its own voice, not with the voice of anyone else.
