Some Just Voted
For Food
By Dahr Jamail
01 February, 2005
Inter Press Service
BAGHDAD, Jan
31 (IPS) - Voting in Baghdad was linked with receipt of food rations,
several voters said after the Sunday poll.
Many Iraqis said
Monday that their names were marked on a list provided by the government
agency that provides monthly food rations before they were allowed to
vote.
I went to
the voting centre and gave my name and district where I lived to a man,
said Wassif Hamsa, a 32-year-old journalist who lives in the predominantly
Shia area Janila in Baghdad. This man then sent me to the person
who distributed my monthly food ration.
Mohammed Ra'ad,
an engineering student who lives in the Baya'a district of the capital
city reported a similar experience.
Ra'ad, 23, said
he saw the man who distributed monthly food rations in his district
at his polling station. The food dealer, who I know personally
of course, took my name and those of my family who were voting,
he said. Only then did I get my ballot and was allowed to vote.
Two of the
food dealers I know told me personally that our food rations would be
withheld if we did not vote, said Saeed Jodhet, a 21-year-old
engineering student who voted in the Hay al-Jihad district of Baghdad.
There has been no
official indication that Iraqis who did not vote would not receive their
monthly food rations.
Many Iraqis had
expressed fears before the election that their monthly food rations
would be cut if they did not vote. They said they had to sign voter
registration forms in order to pick up their food supplies.
Their experiences
on the day of polling have underscored many of their concerns about
questionable methods used by the U.S.-backed Iraqi interim government
to increase voter turnout.
Just days before
the election, 52 year-old Amin Hajar who owns an auto garage in central
Baghdad had said: I'll vote because I can't afford to have my
food ration cut...if that happened, me and my family would starve to
death.
Hajar told IPS that
when he picked up his monthly food ration recently, he was forced to
sign a form stating that he had picked up his voter registration. He
had feared that the government would use this information to track those
who did not vote.
Calls to the Independent
Electoral Commission for Iraq (IECI) and to the Ministry of Trade, which
is responsible for the distribution of the monthly food ration, were
not returned.
Other questions
have arisen over methods to persuade people to vote. U.S. troops tried
to coax voters in Ramadi, capital city of the al-Anbar province west
of Baghdad to come out to vote, AP reported.
IECI officials have
meanwhile 'downgraded' their earlier estimate of voter turnout.
IECI spokesman Farid
Ayar had declared a 72 percent turnout earlier, a figure given also
by the Bush Administration.
But at a press conference
Ayar backtracked on his earlier figure, saying the turnout would be
nearer 60 percent of registered voters.
The earlier figure
of 72 percent, he said, was only guessing and just
an estimate that had been based on very rough, word of mouth
estimates gathered informally from the field. He added that it
will be some time before the IECI can issue accurate figures on the
turnout.
Percentages
and numbers come only after counting and will be announced when it's
over, he said. It is too soon to say that those were the
official numbers.
Where there was
a large turnout, the motivation behind the voting and the processes
both appeared questionable. The Kurds up north were voting for autonomy,
if not independence. In the south and elsewhere Shias were competing
with Kurds for a bigger say in the 275-member national assembly.
In some places like
Mosul the turnout was heavier than expected. But many of the voters
came from outside, and identity checks on voters appeared lax. Others
spoke of vote-buying bids.
The Bush Administration
has lauded the success of the Iraq election, but doubtful voting practices
and claims about voter turnout are both mired in controversy.
Election violence
too was being seen differently across the political spectrum.
More than 30 Iraqis,
a U.S. soldier, and at least 10 British troops died Sunday. Hundreds
of Iraqis were also wounded in attacks across Baghdad, in Baquba 50km
northeast of the capital as well as in the northern cities Mosul and
Kirkuk.
The British troops
were on board a C-130 transport plane that crashed near Balad city just
northwest of Baghdad. The British military has yet to reveal the cause
of the crash.
Despite unprecedented
security measures in which 300,000 U.S. and Iraqi security forces were
brought in to curb the violence, nine suicide bombers and frequent mortar
attacks took a heavy toll in the capital city, while strings of attacks
were reported around the rest of the country.
As U..S. President
George W. Bush saw it, some Iraqis were killed while exercising
their rights as citizens.
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