Iraq: The Bullet and the Ballot Box. posted by Richard Seymour

"Demonstration elections" are "organised and staged by a foreign power primarily to pacify a restive home population, reassuring it that ongoing interventionary processes are legitimate and appreciated by their foreign objects." (Herman and Brodhead, Demonstration Elections, South End Press, 1984, p.5)

These elections have certainly satisfied some domestic audiences, but the effect in Iraq is likely to be more complex - I'll get to that in a minute. First of all, interesting to note that Julian Manyon of ITN suddenly develops enormous balls when reporting for CNN International. Yoshie discovers a transcript in which Manyon casually destroys the euphoria around the elections, saying they would fail to meet international standards:

[I]t's disturbing quite frankly because it's very difficult to see how these elections can live up to international standards in terms of dispassionate supervision and policing of the polls"

. . . I mean, we've got a situation in Mosul, for example, where American troops, we now discover because the Iraqi employees of the election organization have deserted en masse, it's American soldiers who will be transporting the ballot boxes around when they are full of votes. This is really very far from ideal, and if it were happening in any other country -- I mean, one could mention Ukraine, for example -- there would be a wild chorus of international protest. [my emphasis]

This isn't the first time Manyon has broken with the script. MediaLens reports him as saying, before the assault on Fallujah:

"We've had now, this morning, the formality - some would call it, I'm afraid, the fiction - that Iyad Allawi, the prime minister of Iraq, has given the official order to commence the operation against Fallujah. Of course in reality it is an American operation." (Manyon, ITV News, 12:30pm, November 8, 2004)

Some have hailed the allegedly high turnout which, at the present rate, will be revised down to 2% by next week (see Yoshie again on those numbers). However, as Justin Hickman pointed out in relation to the Afghan vote you shouldn't mistake quantity for quality . The elections were shambolic for a surfeit of reasons , and it can't be a surprise to hear Iraqi participants in the World Social Forum at Porto Allegre denounce them , categorically.

However, if we can hear above the metallic clank as Condoleeza Rice sits down for another meeting with European leaders, there are interesting noises coming from Iraq.

The fall-out from the elections in Iraq continues to redound to the considerable disadvantage of Washington's man. Iyad Allawi has about 18% of the vote so far, which, as Juan Cole points out , is likely to fall given a very high turnout among Kurds. It looks likely that the new organ - although it will have no real governing power - will become a constant thorn in the side of the United States. Already some radical Sadr supporters are demanding the withdrawal of US troops. Given further atrocities by the US, (which are becoming so frequent that they no longer stretch credulity), it is hard to see even the more accomodating Shi'ites in the new body can sustain their position by simply acquiescing or cheering the occupiers on as Allawi's regime did. There is an overwhelming mass of opinion in Iraq that favours removing the occupation and, now that the elections have been held, the minority who thought the US should stay until the votes were cast will have no incentive to wait any longer.

The fact that Sunni leaders are offering cooperation with the Shi'ite-led body is a double-edged sword. Some will take it as a sign that the resistance is collapsing, or becoming more isolated - I kind of doubt that. The most important consequence is that the body which the US has invested so much of its domestic credibility in will be implicated in prevailing anti-occupation feeling across the country. It is a fact that these elections happening at all, under one-person one-vote rules, is an achievement of Iraqis and probably to large extent of the Iraqi resistance.

So, for all the fixing and lies that have surrounded this election process, and for all that it excluded large sections of the population, the process has never been entirely driven by the coalition. The trajectory of the entire occupation has been driven by the war of attrition between the resistance and the occupiers, so that the pace of events is no longer dictated by the US. My guess, therefore, is that the political process that the US has designed is lifting off, breaking the surly bonds of Washington, and heading to parts unknown.

My goodness, Ayatollah, what big votes you have! All the better to eat you with.