Iraq voters lament continuing corruption
Votes seen only as a necessity to win favour, jobs
BAGHDAD — Ahmed Abdelruba needs a job. Twenty-three years old and idle, he’s embarrassed he can’t contribute to his family’s rent. So, on Saturday, he did what many Iraqis before him have done: he voted, and prayed a political patron would put him to work.
As Iraq waits for the results of its national elections, The Associated Press is publishing accounts from the polling stations to understand why Iraqis voted, or didn’t vote, the way they did.
Turnout was a record low 44 per cent, according to the national election commission, underscoring the gloomy political mood reflected in these interviews. Many who did vote cited patronage and personal connections for going to the polls.
“I want some advantage from the party, from the state — anything will do,” said Abdelruba, who said it was his first time voting.
He said he cast his vote for influential Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr’s political block, which runs a network of hospitals, charities and schools that employ people from Abdelruba’s Baghdad neighbourhood.
The cleric, who campaigned on a cross-sectarian platform of fighting corruption and investing
in the country, is expected to do well in Baghdad, where some three million people live in the deprived Sadr City quarter, named after Sadr’s father, Ayatollah Mohammad Sadq al-Sadr.
Sadr is also a staunch foe of Iranian and American influence in Iraqi politics.
In a more affluent family, Abdelruba
— tall and athletic, and a touch diffident — might be expected to marry at his age. But he lives at home with his parents and seven other relatives, and everyone pitches in for rent.
In Iraq, finding work is above all about who you know and who you support. When political parties win ministerial posts, they bring in followers to the agencies they take over; the larger the electoral victory, the greater the spoils. They also employ loyal supporters and family members at their charities, hospitals and schools.
“All those people who are affiliated with a party, they find jobs,” said Abdelruba, who said he let Sadr officials know he was voting for their list.
His father, Jassim, said it was up to Ahmed to “take advantage of his youth.”
“Before it’s too late,” Ahmed quipped.
Not all voters see such a direct line between voting and employment.
“Even if I voted, do you think someone is going to say to me, come have a job? No one does,” said Sabah Sobhi, 34, who sells sandwiches by the side of the road. He sat the elections out, after voting four years ago.
“I got nothing out of it,” he said. “It’s all lies, lies, lies.”
“Voters were alienated by the mismanagement of the country by the political parties,” said Ali Radan, 22, an elections observer in Baghdad and an ambitious political organizer.
“The youth see that change happens through elections.”