Iraqis head to polling stations across Middle East
Iraqi voters, hoping to restore order and security to their troubled nation, filed into schools and other makeshift polling stations in neighbouring nations today to cast ballots in their nation’s first democratic election in half a century.
Expatriate Iraqis were voting in 14 countries around the world, but in the Middle East, and especially in autocratic Syria, the election represented a rare exercise in democracy.
Security was tight at the 10 voting stations in Damascus and its suburbs, with private security guards frisking voters before they were allowed to enter.
According to the Geneva-based International Organisation for Migration, there are 201,000 Iraqis living in Syria, but only 8%, or 16,581, have registered to vote. Many of the Iraqis here fled around the time of the US-led invasion of Iraq to escape worsening security conditions.
The voting was taking place in Syria despite strong reservations on the election from the Syrian leadership.
In an interview with Arab reporters accompanying him on a state visit to Moscow, Syrian President Bashar Assad said he supported elections in Iraq in principle, but that “conditions were not ripe,” citing a boycott call by some Sunni Muslims.
“Postponing the elections is a problem, and holding them is a problem,” he said.
The US has accused Syria of meddling in Iraqi affairs and harbouring Saddam sympathisers and members of his former regime. Syria has denied the charges.
Despite Assad’s calls for more openness in Syrian society, democratic elections are non-existent and the ability of people to vote freely here, even if in a foreign election, was unique.
In Iran, 75 % of the 81,000 eligible voters registered. Many of Iraq’s Arab neighbours fear the country’s Shiite Muslim majority, long suppressed under Saddam, will vote in a government that will strengthen ties Iran’s ruling Shiite clerics.
In Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, about 3,000 voters showed up at two polling centres Friday morning.
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