Free Elections Require Free People By Ali al-Hail

Free Elections Require Free People

By Ali al-Hail

Al-Jazeerah, December 27, 2004

Whoever the perpetrators whose obnoxious and loathsome action was responsible for the bloodbath in Najaf and Karbala that massacred 69 people and injured more than a hundred on Sunday December 19, were certainly, aiming at planting the seeds for a civil war to be erupted in Iraq.

While Sadr Eddin al-Qubbanji yesterday, pointed the finger at former Ba'athists of being behind the atrocity, Moqtada Al-Sadr in the meantime, had blatantly stated that only Israel, the United States and Britain are the beneficiaries from such an escalation.

Nevertheless, the profiteers took advantage of the current and regrettably, increasing dispute between Muslim Sunnis and Shi’ats regarding the election on the 30th of January, to commit the crime.

The objective is obvious which is to make it look that the Sunnis did it to punish the Shi’is for going ahead with the planed ballot.

Hence, Iraqis are urged to brush aside their religious and political differences that are extremely irrelevant at least for the time being as the country of all Iraqis is in a huge turmoil.

Both Sunni and Shi’i Muslim clerics ought to rise above the past and remember that both sectors were victims of the ousted regime.

It is undoubtedly, unpatriotic on the part of some Shi’i Muslim leaders to assert from merely, moral point of view that Iraq was dominated by Sunnis until the collapse of Saddam.

As a matter of fact Saddam’s men and women during his reign were practically, sheer Ba'athists, they were neither Sunnis or Shi’is though in theory by and large Saddam’s circle could be described as cross sectarian.

It is a common place fact in Iraq however, that both Shi’is and Sunnis beyond that very vicious circle suffered dearly, from the regime’s brutality.

Therefore, influential leaders in both communities that represent approximately, 90% of Iraqi population should unite together and thump next month's ‘assumed’ milestone general elections in Iraq as a deception and a pretence in order to reinforce the status quo.

Every day developments indicate that this ‘will be free voting’ is bound to fail. Basically, because considering the predicament Iraq has been subjected to since March 20, 2004, there is no ground in Iraq on which a fair and free election can stand.

Although the interim ‘government’ and the American occupation forces keep pressing for the elections to take place on January 30, just to show that they will not give in to ‘terrorists’ the dated January elections is already facing an enormous opposition from vast majority of both Sunni and Shi’i Muslims.

So many people in Iraq argue that how can elections be carried out in such conditions under which the bulk of Iraqis endure.

Simply free elections (if it is genuinely, meant to be so), require that all voters must be consequently, free and since Iraqis are under occupation they are subsequently are not free and as a result the ‘will be elections’ will not accordingly, be free.

If the common sense in Iraq is ever given an opportunity to prevail then the scheduled ballot has to be halted until the occupation ends and the uncontrolled chaos lessens.

Professor Ali Al-Hail

Professor of Mass Communications, Board Member of AUSACE, Member of ASC, IABD, IMDA, AEJMC, BEA, NEBAA American Associations

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

Apartheid Wall


The Israeli Land-Grab Apartheid Wall built inside the Palestinian territories, here separating Abu Dis from occupied East Jerusalem. (IPC, 7/4/04).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python. (Alquds,10/25/03).

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