Iraq Election farce.

Hobbes

I am finding the whole situation comical.

- People will not be told where the polling booths are until the last moment.
- Iraq people cannot vote for a candidate, only a party.
- Ballot papers contain no names on them.
- Having to open polling stations in the US to get the numbers up (which they haven't).

Add to that the country is still in a mess, how can anyone say this is a success*


* Any bets Bush claims it as a victory for democracy.

MeatProduct

Hi Hobbes,

Anywhere I could read up on that, it's shocking. All these elections will be is a victory for world domination and the continued spread of the US admin's "freedom".

Nick

Hobbes

It was on the news this morning.. but dug out a link.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0113/p01s03-woiq.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5065-2005Jan12.html

Nuttzz

I suppose they arent been told about polling booths until the last minute for their own safety what with the card bombing and all

In the recent UK european election voters voted for a party rather than a candidate, was it a big deal in the UK?

If they are only voting for parties why would the ballet papers have names on them?

It will be a farce but not for these reasons.

Hairy Homer

Contrast the willingness of Western governments to allow ex patriate Iraqis (who voluntarily left their homeland) to vote in their former country's elections with the apoplexy that attends any suggestion that Palestinians evicted from their homes by the Israelis have any claim to their emergent nation.

This Zionist diatribe from Kevin Myers in the Irish Times last Wednesday is typical.

Ironic that the BBC that very night should do a feature piece on the election stations being set up in England for the election in, er, Iraq.



An Irishman's Diary
Kevin Myers



"The right of refugees to return to their homes is enshrined in international law," wrote Prof James Bowen of UCC last week. No, it isn't - not in any meaningful sense.

Otherwise the Sudetenland would be full of Germans in lederhosen, slapping their thighs and claiming back their ancestral acres, and Smirna would have crowds of Greek visitors planning to return to the old homestead. Those fleeing the catastrophe of the Famine could certainly claim to be refugees: no doubt the Kennedy clan are covetously eyeing some townland in Wexford.

Anyway, in the absence of international police and international courts, international law has all the might of a county council vote condemning global warming. The professor was making his point in the context of the recent election of Mahmoud Abbas as head of the Palestinian Authority. In essence, he declared this to be invalid, because only Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza were able to vote in the election, but not the 58 per cent who live in the diaspora.

The really interesting question here is that these people are still considered Palestinians. Why? After all, the exodus of Arabs from the land that is now Israel occurred nearly 60 years ago. Are the descendants of those refugees not nationals of the countries they moved to? The answer is no. Arab solidarity with their Palestinian brothers, such as it is, means that "Palestinians" have been denied citizenship by the very countries where they have been raised.

Which just shows you something of the Arab definition of brotherhood. When Northern Catholics were driven out in the pogroms in 1921-22, the Free State did not house them in refugee camps for generation after generation. When the Serbs were driven from Krajina by Croat forces a few years ago, Serbia uncomplainingly absorbed them all, though their ancestors had been living in the lands from which they had been expelled for 500 years.

But the Palestinian refugees of 1948 and 1967 were shown no such compassion by their fellow Arabs. These unfortunates have now been corralled in evil, dreary camps for generation after generation, to go mad from boredom or become easy pickings to whatever religious or terrorist lunatic comes their way. Hardly any wonder that they might still consider themselves "Palestinians"; and hardly any wonder that the election to the head of the Palestinian Authority did not include those "electorates" living in remote exile.

These wretched people, fed by their host-regimes on a diet of dire poverty, social exclusion and unrealisable fantasy, would never vote for anyone who is not going to insist on their right to "return" to a land almost none of them have seen. But Israel is not going to permit 4.5 million Arabs to come to the lands where their families were living in 1948, to join the one million Arabs who already have Israeli citizenship. It is just not going to happen, and it is foolish to pretend that it even might.

The Jewishness of the state of Israel is already threatened demographically by the natural increase of the Palestinian population. Israel is simply not going to accept the presence of 8.8 million Palestinians - the number cited by James Bowen - any more than we would accept the right of millions of Americans with Irish ancestry to come and live in Ireland, or to vote in our general elections from afar. The descendants of the exiled must all in common sense forfeit any right of return - as indeed must all the descendants of Ap Owen to live in Wales.

Not talking unrealistic nonsense is the only way of even beginning to deal with the endless and intractable tragedy in the Middle East. Moreover, the Arab countries which have refused to allow their fellow Arabs citizenship because their families hailed from what is now Israel are primarily responsible for the horrors of the refugee camps today.

Let us admit: what happened to the Arabs in 1948 was wrong, as was what happened in 1945 to the Germans of eastern Europe, as was what happened to the Protestants of West Cork and the Catholics in East Belfast and the Turks of Salonika in 1922. But only a political agenda shaped on time-machine delusions, in which we imagine that it is possible to revisit history and undo what we do not like about it, allows those who sympathise with the Palestinians to present the impossible as negotiable and the fantastic as realisable.

To be sure, one can argue hypothetically against the real need for a Jewish state, just as one can regret how it has attracted from these shores the greater part of an energetic and enriching minority. But this is unproductive stuff. Israel now is. That is that. And neither the people of Israel, the greater Jewish population of the world nor the United States of America will permit any project, demographic or otherwise, to threaten the existence of that state. Israel, after all, is smaller than Munster, whereas the greater Arab world that has steadfastly refused homes or citizenship to the Palestinian refugees and their descendants has the same land-mass as the US.

So those Arabs of Palestinian origin living in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere should get used to those countries - because that's where they're staying. And the appalling plight of these unfortunate people can only be ended when their friends abroad talk sense rather than fantasy, and their cynical Arab hosts - and in effect, their jailers - cease to use them as pawns to be deployed against Israel.

A Dub in Glasgo

Hairy Homer wrote:

Contrast the willingness of Western governments to allow ex patriate Iraqis (who voluntarily left their homeland) to vote in their former country's elections

Even Ireland does not allow her ex-pats who emigrated out of the country (some because of the economic situation) vote in Irish elections

Hairy Homer

A Dub in Glasgo wrote:

Even Ireland does not allow her ex-pats who emigrated out of the country (some because of the economic situation) vote in Irish elections

Mind you, I think Britain does. Or it certainly did some years back. When Maggie was in power they allowed people who had emigrated up to 20 years back to vote in their general election. Of course the mail shots urging such people to register were tightly targeted at affluent ex pats in places like South Africa (pre MAndela).

I well remember one hilarious interview on the Beeb with a rich white family, whose mum had affected a pronounced South African accent in which she said (slightly paraphrased): 'It's our duty to vote Conservative. Britain's gone to the dogs with unemployment and high crime and that wouldn't be happening if a Conservative government was in power.' At which point her husband nudged her to shut up saying out of the corner of his mouth. 'They've been in power for the last ten years, actually.'

It should make it on to 'Auntie's Bloomers' some time.

toiletduck

i think you should see how the election goes before hailing it as a farce...

bonkey

Most ppl below the very top echelons of the US government who I've heard comment on the elections have all come straight out and said that these elections are "proper" only in the sense that they will give some initial degree of legitimacy from which a real democracy can be created.

I'm still unconvinced that even that level of election can be held now, but given that its more or less a fait accompli that the elections will happen, I'll reserve proper judgement until events unfold.

As an aside...there was an interesting news article over here just before Christmas, where it appeared that a serious vote-counting operation was being set up in Switzerland, and there was speculation that the entire vote would be counted here. This seems at odds with what has been mentioned on CNN in the last day or two, but I just thought I'd mention it. Most probably it was, instead, the establishment of a voting-centre here.

As another aside...with all the focus being put on the security surrounding the elections....wouldn't the smart terrorist/resistance use this as an opportunity to attack other targets? The massive amounts of manpower to protect polling booths and voters has to be diverted from somewhere. Just idle speculation, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some non-election-relevant targets hit hard on the day.

jc

mycroft

I heard Deputy Martin is being sent to supervise the voting...

Da dum dum dum.