|
|
|||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
News Search
|
|
30-01-2005 PA NEWS Iraq Scotsman The following is pooled copy from Gethin Chamberlain, of The Scotsman, in Basra, Iraq The ballot boxes were full almost to overflowing, and still people queued up to get in to the polling stations. They turned out in their hundreds of thousands, walking in family groups, couples with their children, talking excitedly about what for the majority was their first chance to cast a vote in an election for anyone other than Saddam Hussein. Maybe it was the weight of the overwhelming security, maybe it was just the sheer desire to vote, but in Basra yesterday it appeared that nothing could stop the people from making their voices heard. And what they were saying was this: we want to vote, we want to decide for ourselves what our future will hold and above all of this, we want to show that we are free. “This is the first time to decide for ourselves,” said Taliaa Abdul Karim, a young bank worker who turned up at the al Kamadil primary girls school with her friends to vote. It was already late in the day when she walked in, and there was precious little room left in the transparent plastic ballot boxes for her paper. She waited for the clerk to find her name on the register of voters, took her voting forms, went behind one of the cardboard booths set up at the far end of the room, and emerged to drop the two completed forms into the boxes. Then she dipped her finger into the tub of indelible indigo ink. It was there to make sure no-one voted twice, but people brandished their marked index fingers like badges of honour. “This is the first time we can be free,” Taliaa said. “Saddam Hussein was putting us in jail, he would not allow us to breathe.” The future, she said, would not be that way. “I hope that we will have the government first and for all thinking of the people here. We want freedom, freedom of opinion and I hope it will be just and we will have equality and no sectarian differences. The voice of women should he heard in this society.” Nori Jawad, the jovial headmaster running the polling station, could not contain his excitement. The first people turned up at 7am, men and women, he said; by 4pm, an hour before the polls closed, 80 per cent of the 4020 people on his list had cast their votes. “Today, everyone is treating it like Christmas,” he said. “Yes, Christmas. The old regime is finished. This will succeed. Saddam put pressure on people to come to the elections but now they come because they want to.” It had not started so auspiciously. In the air over the city, two US warplanes made their presence known but the polls had been open little more than an hour when the sound of the first explosion rolled across the city. Three quarters of an hour later, another very large explosion and then five minutes later, another. Mortars, the army said, but there were no casualties and no reports of damage to property. Two more explosions followed, but it was not the start of the deluge that some had feared. Instead, the intensive security operation that had gripped the city for days did its job, those insurgents still at large unable to strike a decisive blow. The Scots Guards raid on suspected bombers in the early hours of election eve had taken them out of the equation, but much of the credit must go to the Iraqi police who, it became clear as dawn broke, had the city in their grip. The bombers simply could not get in. Roads were blocked, the streets normally jammed with traffic virtually empty, the polling stations taped off and guards on their roofs. Inside and on the gates, more police; outside in the streets and on the checkpoints, the new Iraqi army. It did not take long to pick up the mortar team. The British army kept away from the polling stations: they were under orders to do so, but they were not needed. Instead, they skirted around the edges, concerned about the mortar attacks, but determined to give the Iraqi forces their head. Even those who saw the mortars land were undeterred. In the old Alasmaay district, Kadir Mohammed Ayada - the man in charge of polling at the Abu al Aswad ad Duwal school - said the round landed 100 metres away. “It landed on waste land outside the main cordon,” he said. “To stop people panicking we told them it was a gas cylinder exploding but when the women found out what it really was they ululated in defiance.” There were a few quirks, but nothing to concern the election monitors touring the polling stations. Allowances were made for the many people unable to register in time to vote, or unable to travel to home town polling stations because of the travel restrictions. They were allowed to hand in their registration forms at the polling stations and then to vote, but their names were recorded on the voting register and the forms filed neatly away. Mid afternoon at the Al Fidaa al Falastini school ?the school of the Palestinian sacrifice? to the north east of the city across the Shatt Al Arab canal, and the queue still stretched out of the gates on to the compacted dirt ground outside the whitewashed wall that surrounded the single storey building. There were more women than men: someone explained that the women had been doing the housework first before going along to vote. A group of women waited patiently to vote: their names were not on the list but they brought with them registration forms, and that is good enough for the election officials. Their names were added to the lists and they disappeared behind the cardboard screens. When they emerged, they pushed A2 size voting forms into each of the two transparent ballot boxes, fastened down with black cable ties. Out of 3881 people registered to vote here, almost 3,000 have done so by 2.30pm. Salman Abdul Karim is the man in charge of the polling station; he is the headmaster of the school. “All women, all families come here, even those with families or elderly people. Some have brought their babies,” he says. The women in the queue giggle. They are excited; it is the first time they have voted. We want some fuel, they say, we are feeling cold, we want water and power. There are police everywhere inside the polling station, all carrying AK47s. Some have pistols too. Mr Karim is not bothered about the rules that say people should have registered before today: “The work of the IECI ?Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq? may not be accurate,” he says. “And there is a lack of awareness among the ordinary people. They are not used to it.” People who cannot read are allowed to bring along a member of their family to help them fill in their ballot forms, or to ask the staff at the polling station for help. Mr Karim had heard about the threats to the polling stations, and to the election staff, but he is not bothered, he says. “To be honest I was sure 100 per cent that nothing would happen and the reason was that people are so good here. I was so sure of that,” he says. But anyway, he has taken no chances, he says, gesturing to the policemen around him. And he has no time for Abu Musab al Zarqawi and his threats: “To be honest I was belittling Zarqawi,” he says. It is five o'clock. The polls have closed. There are people strolling down the car-less streets. Boys play football in the road, women stand around chatting. There have been no more explosions. The people of Basra have had their say, and they have spoken loudly.
|
|
||||
|
................................................................................................................. Copyright ©2004 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
|||||||
