{"id":1739,"date":"2005-01-31T01:35:39","date_gmt":"2005-01-31T08:35:39","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2005-01-31T01:35:39","modified_gmt":"2005-01-31T08:35:39","slug":"raed-vote-for-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2005\/01\/31\/raed-vote-for-food\/","title":{"rendered":"Raed: Vote for Food"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Vote_for_food\"<\/a><\/p>\n

No warbots will be quoting Raed today. He is mad.<\/i> By Raed’s calculation, turnout was less than 50%, at best, counting expats.<\/p>\n

Vote For Food <\/a><\/p>\n

In other news….<\/p>\n

Get ready for The Morning After:<\/a><\/p>\n

Mosul – The local electoral commission representative only began his work in earnest a week ago after his predecessor and entire staff resigned two months earlier.<\/p>\n

A few hundred electoral workers were hastily flown in from Baghdad at the last minute, with most receiving only two hours of training. There was also a virtual absence of any independent election monitors.<\/p>\n

The results were evident inside the polling stations.<\/p>\n

At the Al-Khazrajiya school in the city’s old quarter, Najat Ridha, 48, was ushered into a classroom and handed two ballots, one for the national assembly and another for the local provincial council.<\/p>\n

An election worker suggested she vote for list 285 headed by interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and a local list headed by governor Duraid Kashmula.<\/p>\n

She ticked the boxes obligingly and walked out – just as Zahra Ibrahim, 60, did before her.<\/p>\n

“I really just did what they asked me to do,” she said as the Iraqi national anthem crackled on a loudspeaker in the background.<\/p>\n

Similar scenes unfolded at the Al-Fadhila school on the west side as men and women, perplexed over what the list numbers stood for, were offered suggestions and a helping hand by election workers.<\/p>\n

“I want to vote for Allawi and Yawar,” said a frustrated Fatima Hashim, 50.<\/p>\n

Both Dr Allawi and interim President Ghazi al-Yawar, himself from Mosul, head competing lists for seats on the national assembly, but were popular choices in the city because of their high profile.<\/p>\n

The lists, which only bear numbers and not candidate names for the most part, were published only two days before.<\/p>\n

At a polling station in the New Mosul neighbourhood, Mahasin Ahmed, 37, a school teacher, wanted to vote for Yawar, a tribal leader, but did not know that his list number was 255 and neither did the election worker helping her.<\/p>\n

He suggested she vote for list 188 because it had “tribes” in the title.<\/p>\n

“I found most of the election workers unqualified and I observed many irregularities,” said Guevara Yokhana, 34, a Christian running in the local elections, who visited seven of the 20 polling stations on the city’s east side.<\/p>\n

He said a lack of ballot papers sparked riots in the town of Qaraqush as thousands of furious Christians and Kurds realised they were unable to vote.<\/p>\n

A Patriotic Union for Kurdistan official described a similar situation in Bashiqa district. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No warbots will be quoting Raed today. He is mad. By Raed’s calculation, turnout was less than 50%, at best, counting expats. Vote For Food In other news…. Get ready for The Morning After: Mosul – The local electoral commission representative only began his work in earnest a week ago after his predecessor and entire […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1739"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}