Iraqi Expats Prepare for Crucial Elections

Iraqi expatriates in Iran are preparing to cast their ballots in a crucial national election whose winner will face the daunting task of reconstructing the Arab country after years of foreign wars, civil strife and death and destruction spread by the self-styled Islamic State terrorist group.  
The May 12 parliamentary elections will be the fourth held since the fall of former dictator Saddam Hussein after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. More than 24 million of Iraq’s 37 million people are eligible to vote, according to Reuters. 
There are nearly 7,000 candidates running for 329 seats in 18 provinces using Iraq’s proportional representation system. The election will decide the prime minister who will lead the country for the next four years.
Under the informal power-sharing arrangement in place since Saddam’s ouster, the prime minister has always come from the Shia majority with a Kurdish president and a Sunni speaker.