Pacific Views

Iraqi Elections

River of Riverbend reflects on the election and believes that Baghdad will have a good turnout. As with Americans during our elections, she is disappointed that there are no better candidates. Looking at her choices, she's leaning towards Allawi.

More people are going to elect this time around- not because Iraqis suddenly believe in American-imposed democracy under occupation, but because the situation this last year has been intolerable. Hakim and Ja’affari and their minions have managed to botch things up so badly, Allawi is actually looking acceptable in the eyes of many. I still can't stand him.

Allawi is still an American puppet. His campaign posters, and the horrors of the last year, haven’t changed that. People haven’t forgotten his culpability in the whole Fallujah debacle. For some Iraqis, however, he’s preferable to Hakim and Ja’affari after a year of detentions, abductions, assassinations and secret torture prisons.

There’s a saying in Iraq which people are using right and left lately, and that I've used before in the blog, “Ili ishuf il mout, yirdha bil iskhuna.” He who sees death, is content with a fever. Allawi et al. seem to be the fever these days…

River reports, as Juan Cole noted, the security situation leading up to the election is so bad that the majority of the campaigning is being conducted by television.

Nevertheless, for many Iraqis, the election marks the next stop on the road to self-governance. Let's hope that this election does help bring about another, more stable government and a way for us to extract our troops from Iraq soon for both ourselves and the sakes of the Iraqis.

Posted by Mary at December 14, 2005 11:10 PM | Iraq | Technorati links |