Hollow Election Held on Bloody Day

ipsnews.net
Hollow Election Held on Bloody Day
Mon, 31 Jan 2005

Iraq Elections

From beneath the apparently satisfactory number of voters, IPS brings
up stories from ground level on the shape of the Iraq election. It was
one thing that votes were cast in the north and the south, and that the
centre almost did not vote. It was another that even in north and
south, the voting was not driven by a democratic drive. The facts reported
by IPS correspondents raise some difficult questions.

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IRAQ: Hollow Election Held on Bloody Day
By Dahr Jamail
BAGHDAD - An overnight rocket attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad
that killed two Americans and injured four others set the tone for the
election Sunday.
http://ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=27247

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IRAQ: 'A Real Election After All'
By Ferry Biedermann
MOSUL - Election day in Iraq's violence-prone, third largest city Mosul
ended as it began, with a spate of bomb attacks. But in between a fair
number of people voted.
http://ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=27253

***
IRAQ: Kurds Could Not Wait To Vote
By Aaron Glantz
ARBIL, Northern Iraq - It is 8.30 in the morning and the roads of Arbil
appear for a moment to be eerily silent. Most cars have been banned
from the streets of this Kurdish city of 800,000. Roadblocks are up all
over town.
http://ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=27249

***
IRAQ: This Democracy Could Be Paper Thin
By Aaron Glantz
ARBIL, Northern Iraq - Many Kurds in Northern Iraq are facing new
threats - and they do not come from masked Arab terrorists. They come from
the two main Kurdish parties doing all they can to gain strength in the
election Sunday, independent local journalists and opposition
politicians say.
http://ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=27240

***
IRAQ: The Dollar Campaigns for Allawi
By Dahr Jamail
BAGHDAD - U.S.-appointed interim Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi
recently handed out 100- dollar bills to journalists at a press conference.
He then gave teachers an unexpected 100-dollar bonus.
http://ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=27202