FOR decades, voting in Iraq meant taking part in a national exercise of state-enforced adulation, as 99 per cent of the electorate would dutifully turn out to tick the box beside the name Saddam Hussein.
Yesterday the contrast could not have been starker, as the campaign for Sunday’s elections picked up pace and voters were presented with a dizzying selection of dozens of candidates and parties.
Notwithstanding insurgent terror aimed at wrecking the polls, there is finally a palpable sense in Baghdad, and other Iraqi cities, that the country is entering a new era.
At the Babylon Hotel tribal sheikhs in long gowns and Arab headdress gathered to hear politicians extol the virtues of Iyad Allawi, the interim Prime Minister, who was being touted as the only man with the strength and will to solve Iraq’s numerous problems.
Across town Kurdish voters were treated to large slices of chocolate cake, folk dancing and poetry readings praising democracy and reminding them of their duty to their nation.
[How festive!
At least they're making it fun and friendly and getting the right spirit.
Love those Kurds!--Jen]
Elsewhere street urchins were discovering that democracy can pay. They have been hired en masse to put up posters and billboards on every wall space available and probably paid a little extra to tear down the slogans of rival politicians.
Some of the campaigning methods are fairly crude.
One boy said that the police had given him a stack of posters of the Prime Minister and ordered him to put them up around his neighbourhood. The Iraqi Electoral Commission has received complaints that some parties have warned voters that they would “go to hell” unless they supported their candidates.
[Gosh! I know I think that about the Dimocrats here, but...LOL--J.T.]
Others have used photographs of influential religious leaders, such as Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, in their campaign posters even though the Shia cleric is not running in the elections.
While voters may be confused by the experiment in democracy, they cannot complain about a lack of choice. There is a Communist Party, with the message of a “free country and a happy people”, a monarchist movement pledging the restoration of the Hashemite dynasty, and even a party under the banner of Abdul Karim al-Qassim, the former brigadier-general who seized power in a military coup.
Voters from the Sunni population, many of whom may boycott the vote, will find themselves well represented should they visit the polling stations. Ghazi al-Yawer, the President, Adnan Pachachi, Iraq’s elder statesman, and even the Islamic Iraq Party, which has officially pulled out of the vote, will present party lists on polling day.
Political pundits agree that three of the coalition lists will dominate Sunday’s polls. The United Iraqi Alliance, a loose collection of more than 100 parties supported by Ayatollah al-Sistani, is expected to win as much as 40 per cent of the vote, drawing on the support of the majority Shia population in central and southern Iraq and Sadr City, in Baghdad. Not only do Shias believe that they will finally win power after centuries as second-class citizens, they have also been told that voting is a religious duty.
In spite of the strong religious backing, the party has been at pains to emphasise that it supports secular politics and rejects any notion of an Iranian-style theocracy. To make the point that it is not bound to Islamic doctrine, it put up posters of a beautiful girl with long, flowing black hair that looked more like an advertisement for shampoo.
[Now this is kind of funny, too, but let's hope they mean it about preserving secular government!--Jen]
The second strongest coalition is the Kurdish Alliance, which could win up to 20 per cent of the vote. It is an amalgam of the two main movements, the Kurdish Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. Both groups want to protect the autonomy they have achieved over the past decade in northern Iraq and ensure that Kurds have a powerful voice in central government. They could well emerge as key coalition partners in any future government.
[Thanks to the protection of the joint U.S.-U.K. no-fly-zones and their own initiatives, of course, the Kurds have virtually run their own state since 1991.]
The fate of Dr Allawi’s Iraqi List is less clear. Condemned by critics as a puppet of America, and the man who authorised US forces to put down a rebellion in Najaf last year and storm the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, he nonetheless commands respect among many Iraqis who believe that the country needs a hard man to restore authority. The rest of the seats are likely to be shared by several smaller parties.
One thing not in doubt is that the elections will go ahead and that there will be a result sometime next month. “I think that despite everything, many Iraqis will vote on Sunday,” Fadel Alfatlwi, the head of the Iraqi Institute for Peace and an independent candidate, said. “With the occupation and all the horrible things that have happened, people dream that they will be wealthy and happy. That dream starts with the election.”
Well, Mr. Alfatlwi, we feel pretty much the same way when we vote here in America!
Dreams, HOPE, the freedom to pursue happiness and to LIVE and prosper in liberty...As President Bush said once again in his Inaugural address, this is what all human beings share and what we want for our fellow men and women and we've made that possible in Iraq
I'm so pleased and proud of my country, especially all our troops in country, when it makes things like this possible and I can only hope that some of my tax money went into it.
We can't know how wonderful an event this really is without having lived under the darkness that was Saddam, but we can try.
I'm thrilled and excited for the Iraqi people and I'm sure that this will be the first of many free and democratic elections in their great country.
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