Iraqi Elections: The Facade
Fareed Ayar, spokesman for the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq.
News: The popular wisdom in Baghdad is that the 275 assembly members have already been chosen.
January 26, 2005
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The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq yesterday released the names of all the candidates for Sunday's vote -- that is, just five days before the election. (Think about that. How nice it would be... without all of that terrible, endless campaigning and mudslinging that Americans are forced to endure. Perhaps real democracy should be short and sweet.)
I went over to the IECI office this morning for an interview with Fareed Ayar, the commission's spokesman. I arrived to find him readily accessible in the lobby of the building and shouting at anyone willing to listen.
"This is stupid! I don't have anywhere to meet the press! I have these men who follow me everywhere [gesturing at the three private security guards] but I have no office!"
One of the guards, a guy from Kentucky, gave Ayar a patronizing, kindergarten-teacher smile.
"A good journalist can do an interview anywhere," he said softly to Ayar, looking over to me and a couple of guys from Kuwait TV. "And I'm sure these people here are super journalists."
Another sugary smile, this time for the press.
"He hates us now, but he'll love us when someone starts shooting at him," the guard said as we followed Ayar up to the second floor, where he booted someone else from their office, at least temporarily solving the problem.
The votes will be counted by hand. I asked Ayar how long he expected it would take. (The oft-reported figure is 10 days.)
"Less than 10 days," he said. "Maybe six, maybe seven. Six, seven... nine."
It took almost two hours to get to Ayar's — ahem — office this morning because of traffic and the closure of the Jumhuriyah Bridge. (Such trafffic jams are a commonplace and maddening fact of life in occupied Iraq. The trip, if the roads are clear, takes about 10 minutes.) The bridge was closed by a Bradley fighting vehicle. We reached the halfway point before stopping and I got out to walk, but barely got within shouting distance before the troops on the other side waved me back.
"Journalist!" I shouted.
"Go back!"
Hiba (the translator I work with) began walking back toward the car, but I paused on the bridge. It was quite peaceful, standing above the river without the noise of the traffic. I turned away from the Bradley toward the cool, fresh breeze blowing off the water, which is sluggish and low this time of year. Looking across the at the other bridges, one has the sense for a moment of another city, perhaps even a bit of a feeling of being in Paris, with the symmetry of the bridges.
A few feet to my left, the railing bears a large hole and is twisted and torn from a large-caliber bullet, the exposed metal completely rusted. It's probably from the first time U.S. armor rolled over the bridge nearly two years ago. Following Hiba back to the car, I looked up at a building, probably 10 or 15 stories tall, that Iraqis call the Turkish restaurant. It sits at the end of the bridge and is still full of holes from artillery bombardment. A few blocks away, there is the still-standing shell of a communications building, hit by a shock and awe missile, it's roof once again covered with antennae and dishes, despite the pieces of rebar sticking out from the top floors at awkward angles. Much of Baghdad's skyline has a phantasmic quality to it, virtually none of of the buildings destroyed during the invasion have been cleaned up, much less reconstructed.
On the Turkish restaurant, next to the artillery holes, hangs a large banner advertising the Pentagon-funded local television station, Al-Iraqia. That's often what passes for genuine reconstruction — a marketing campaign. The occupiers can print money that doesn't have Saddam's face on it, but people need jobs.
All over town there are billboards offering a $25 million reward for Zarqawi. I've heard more than one Iraqi mention that there are probably better ways to spend that $25 million.
(I also noticed that despite Ayar's lack of digs, someone had taken the time to make coasters with the IECI logo, which sat nicely on the coffee table in the office he borrowed.)
Other billboards, likely not designed by Iraqis, feature burning cars or dead bodies, presumably intended to generate ill-feeling toward the "terrorists". I doubt Iraqis need to be reminded of what dead bodies look like. More often than not, the ads are torn down or defaced by the resistance. (When I speak about the "resistance," I would like to make clear that I am not trying to legitimize their aims or means, but let's call a spade a spade. One of my favorite things to do during interviews with members of the new government is to purposely use the word resistance and wait for them to correct me.)
The popular wisdom in town is that the 275 assembly members have already been chosen, making the vote a Saddam-style farce, and seeing the IECI offices, barricaded somewhere in the Green Zone, it did seem rather hard to believe that they could really pull off a proper election. The offices also seemed strangely quiet (the man who was kicked out of his office didn't seem particularly busy) with only four days before the election.
After leaving Ayar, I went to the convention center (also in the Green Zone) to pick up my IECI credential. I had to shove my way through a mosh-pit close scrum of journalists waiting for their cards to sneak in the office and get mine. (For some reason, there seemed to be a slightly different process for foreign journalists.) Inside the office there were about half a dozen IECI employees assembling the IDs, which were being filled out by hand, cut out with pair of scissors and then fed into a single laminator. They've done more than 1000 of them, but it's not enough — the world press corps is converging on the convention center, and the chaos of the scene was not heartening... if they can't credential the press for the election in an orderly manner...
For better or for worse, the show is going forward. More and more streets are being blocked as polling stations are set up. Eid Al-Adha, a four day holiday marking the hajj, ended on Sunday, and it appears Iraqis are going to get another few days off. Offices are already beginning to close, people are going out of town. Many people I speak to in order to set up appointments end their phone calls with "let's talk after the election." Hoarding has begun, at least of fuel.
The only optimistic people seem to be the candidates, but the optimism feels more like denial. I met yesterday with Khaial Al-Jawahity, the daughter of one of Iraq's most famous poets. She returned shortly after the war.
"I can't even express my feelings when I came back — it was 24 years. When we left the country we thought we would come back maybe in one, two, three or four years. I have been here for one and half years but I'm still very eager to look at the river and the palms. In spite of the bad security situation, I feel comfortable being here, except for the terrorism," she said.
Al-Jawahiry was initially (as were most candidates) in favor of postponing the elections but said it was time to be pragmatic.
"I was with the idea of postponing it because of the idea of the security situation, but we were aftaid that even if we postponed it, things would not get better," she said. "Those people who are opposing the occupation should know that they are already here and they just should be all together in order to think about what will come next."
David Enders is a 24-year-old freelance journalist who has spent more than a year reporting from Iraq since the end of the invasion. His first book, Baghdad Bulletin: The Real Story of the War in Iraq--Reporting from Beyond the Green Zone, will be released by the University of Michigan Press in April.
Photo: AFP Imageforum
