The Vietnam
Turnout Was
Good As Well
By Sami Ramadani
01February, 2005
The
Guardian
On
September 4 1967 the New York Times published an upbeat story on presidential
elections held by the South Vietnamese puppet regime at the height of
the Vietnam war. Under the heading "US encouraged by Vietnam vote:
Officials cite 83% turnout despite Vietcong terror", the paper
reported that the Americans had been "surprised and heartened"
by the size of the turnout "despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign
to disrupt the voting". A successful election, it went on, "has
long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging
the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam". The echoes
of this weekend's propaganda about Iraq's elections are so close as
to be uncanny.
With the past few
days' avalanche of spin, you could be forgiven for thinking that on
January 30 2005 the US-led occupation of Iraq ended and the people won
their freedom and democratic rights. This has been a multi-layered campaign,
reminiscent of the pre-war WMD frenzy and fantasies about the flowers
Iraqis were collecting to throw at the invasion forces. How you could
square the words democracy, free and fair with the brutal reality of
occupation, martial law, a US-appointed election commission and secret
candidates has rarely been allowed to get in the way of the hype.
If truth is the
first casualty of war, reliable numbers must be the first casualty of
an occupation-controlled election. The second layer of spin has been
designed to convince us that an overwhelming majority of Iraqis participated.
The initial claim of 72% having voted was quickly downgraded to 57%
of those registered to vote. So what percentage of the adult population
is registered to vote? The Iraqi ambassador in London was unable to
enlighten me. In fact, as UN sources confirm, there has been no registration
or published list of electors - all we are told is that about 14 million
people were entitled to vote.
As for Iraqis abroad,
the up to 4 million strong exiled community (with perhaps a little over
2 million entitled to vote) produced a 280,000 registration figure.
Of those, 265,000 actually voted.
The Iraqi south,
more religious than Baghdad, responded positively to Grand Ayatollah
al-Sistani's position: to call the bluff of the US and vote for a list
that was proclaimed to be hostile to the occupation. Sistani's supporters
declared that voting on Sunday was the first step to kicking out the
occupiers. The months ahead will put these declarations to a severe
test. Meanwhile Moqtada al-Sadr's popular movement, which rejected the
elections as a sham, is likely to make a comeback in its open resistance
to the occupation.
The big vote in
Kurdistan primarily reflects the Kurdish people's demand for national
self-determination. The US administration has hitherto clamped down
on these pressures. Henry Kissinger's recent proposal to divide Iraq
into three states reflects a major shift among influential figures in
the US who, led by Kissinger as secretary of state, ditched the Kurds
in the 70s and brokered a deal between Saddam and the Shah of Iran.
George Bush and
Tony Blair made heroic speeches on Sunday implying that Iraqis had voted
to approve the occupation. Those who insist that the US is desperate
for an exit strategy are misreading its intentions. The facts on the
ground, including the construction of massive military bases in Iraq,
indicate that the US is digging in to install and back a long-term puppet
regime. For this reason, the US-led presence will continue, with all
that entails in terms of bloodshed and destruction.
In the run-up to
the poll, much of the western media presented it as a high-noon shootout
between the terrorist Zarqawi and the Iraqi people, with the occupation
forces doing their best to enable the people to defeat the fiendish,
one-legged Jordanian murderer. In reality, Zarqawi-style sectarian violence
is not only condemned by Iraqis across the political spectrum, including
supporters of the resistance, but is widely seen as having had a blind
eye turned to it by the occupation authorities. Such attitudes are dismissed
by outsiders, but the record of John Negroponte, the US ambassador in
Baghdad, of backing terror gangs in central America in the 80s has fuelled
these fears, as has Seymour Hirsh's reports on the Pentagon's assassination
squads and enthusiasm for the "Salvador option".
An honest analysis
of the social and political map of Iraq reveals that Iraqis are increasingly
united in their determination to end the occupation. Whether they participated
in or boycotted Sunday's exercise, this political bond will soon reassert
itself - just as it did in Vietnam - despite tactical differences, and
despite the US-led occupation's attempts to dominate Iraqis by inflaming
sectarian and ethnic divisions.
· Sami Ramadani
was a political refugee from Saddam Hussein's regime and is a senior
lecturer at London Metropolitan University
[email protected]
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005