Hey, an election more nuts than Florida or Ohio. We should be happy that we're not the worst.
It's going to be a hand count by whom? At least it's not Diebold who is busily working on a Bush contract to populate Iraq with ATMs. Oh heck, maybe those are Diebold employees counting the ballots by hand.
Who knows? International observers are sitting in Kuwait, candidates are in hiding, some voters can neither read or write but, heck, voting was a carnival.
One note about corporate media though, at least some of them acknowledged that the planned Iraqi face of security was complete bs. It looked, more than ever, like a total US occupation.
==============http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200501/s1292228.htm
Last Update: Monday, January 31, 2005. 10:05am (AEDT)
Irregularities mar northern Iraq poll
Iraq's crunch election has been marred by irregularities and low turnout in Mosul, despite insistence from the US military that voting in the restive northern capital passed off smoothly.
Kurdish and Christian politicians charged that thousands were unable to vote in Nineveh province because of a lack of ballot papers, sparking riots in one town north of Mosul.
As night fell when polling sites closed 10 hours after they opened, US troops transported both ballot boxes and election workers to a US military base for the laborious count.
With the exception of isolated incidents, Mosul did not suffer the violence US commanders had feared in the predominantly Sunni Muslim city of about 1.5 million.
An Iraqi soldier accidentally killed a civilian, a voter was wounded by sniper fire as he left a polling station and four mortar explosions caused no casualties, said the military.
Dozens of US Stryker soldiers roamed the streets while others stood near, but not too close to polling centres. Fighter jets and helicopters flew overhead.
US and Iraqi officials were heartened anyone voted, given repeated threats by insurgents to attack polling stations and boycott calls from many Sunni political and religious leaders.
Dire security precluded campaigning in the province, home to about one million voters.
The local electoral commission representative only began his work in earnest a week ago after his predecessor and entire staff resigned two months earlier.
A few hundred electoral workers were hastily flown in from Baghdad at the last minute, with most receiving only two hours of training. There was also a virtual absence of any independent election monitors.
The results were evident inside the polling stations.
At the Al-Khazrajiya school in the city's old quarter, Najat Ridha, 48, was ushered into a classroom and handed two ballots, one for the national assembly and another for the local provincial council.
An election worker suggested she vote for list 285 headed by interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and a local list headed by governor Duraid Kashmula.
She ticked the boxes obligingly and walked out - just as Zahra Ibrahim, 60, did before her.
"I really just did what they asked me to do," she said as the Iraqi national anthem crackled on a loudspeaker in the background.
Similar scenes unfolded at the Al-Fadhila school on the west side as men and women, perplexed over what the list numbers stood for, were offered suggestions and a helping hand by election workers.
"I want to vote for Allawi and Yawar," said a frustrated Fatima Hashim, 50.
Both Dr Allawi and interim President Ghazi al-Yawar, himself from Mosul, head competing lists for seats on the national assembly, but were popular choices in the city because of their high profile.
The lists, which only bear numbers and not candidate names for the most part, were published only two days before.
At a polling station in the New Mosul neighbourhood, Mahasin Ahmed, 37, a school teacher, wanted to vote for Yawar, a tribal leader, but did not know that his list number was 255 and neither did the election worker helping her.
He suggested she vote for list 188 because it had "tribes" in the title.
"I found most of the election workers unqualified and I observed many irregularities," said Guevara Yokhana, 34, a Christian running in the local elections, who visited seven of the 20 polling stations on the city's east side.
He said a lack of ballot papers sparked riots in the town of Qaraqush as thousands of furious Christians and Kurds realised they were unable to vote.
A Patriotic Union for Kurdistan official described a similar situation in Bashiqa district.
For many it was a chance to forget the daily staple of violence and dream of a better future.
"I want my generation to be happy," said Rami Aziz, a 22-year-old student.
-AFP |
