[lit-ideas] The selling of ballots
- From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2005 09:22:04 EST
Ah, democracy in action.... this is a snippet from Riverbend's latest post
found here: _http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/_
(http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/) (for those unfamiliar, Riverbend is a
young woman living in
Baghdad who has traveled abroad extensively and was a computer programmer
before
her office was bombed in our initial attack there).
<<We're being bombarded with cute Iraqi commercials of happy Iraqi families
preparing to vote. Signs and billboards remind us that the elections are
getting closer...
Can you just imagine what our history books are going to look like 20 years
from now?
"The first democratic elections were held in Iraq on January 29, 2005 under
the ever-watchful collective eye of the occupation forces, headed by the
United States of America. Troops in tanks watched as swarms of warm, fuzzy
Iraqis
headed for the ballot boxes to select one of the American-approved
candidates..."
It won't look good.
There are several problems. The first is the fact that, technically, we
don't know the candidates. We know the principal heads of the lists but we
don't
know who exactly will be running. It really is confusing. They aren't making
the lists public because they are afraid the candidates will be assassinated.
Another problem is the selling of ballots. We're getting our ballots through
the people who give out the food rations in the varying areas. The whole
family is registered with this person(s) and the ages of the varying family
members are known. Many, many, many people are not going to vote. Some of those
people are selling their voting cards for up to $400. The word on the street is
that these ballots are being bought by people coming in from Iran. They will
purchase the ballots, make false IDs (which is ridiculously easy these days)
and vote for SCIRI or Daawa candidates. Sunnis are receiving their ballots
although they don't intend to vote, just so that they won't be sold.
Yet another issue is the fact that on all the voting cards, the gender of
the voter, regardless of sex, is labeled "male". Now, call me insane, but I
found this slightly disturbing. Why was that done? Was it some sort of a
mistake? Why is the sex on the card anyway? What difference does it make?
There are
some theories about this. Some are saying that many of the more religiously
inclined families won't want their womenfolk voting so it might be permissible
for the head of the family to take the women's ID and her ballot and do the
voting for her. Another theory is that this 'mistake' will make things easier
for people making fake IDs to vote in place of females.
All of this has given the coming elections a sort of sinister cloak. There
is too much mystery involved and too little transparency. It is more than a
little bit worrisome.
American politicians seem to be very confident that Iraq is going to come
out of these elections with a secular government. How is that going to happen
when many Shia Iraqis are being driven to vote with various fatwas from
Sistani and gang? Sistani and some others of Iranian inclination came out with
fatwas claiming that non-voters will burn in the hottest fires of the
underworld
for an eternity if they don't vote (I'm wondering- was this a fatwa borrowed
from right-wing Bushies during the American elections?). So someone fuelled
with a scorching fatwa like that one- how will they vote? Secular? Yeah,
right.
>>
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