The Choice is Yours: Vote Saddam
B A G H D A D, Iraq, Oct. 16, 2002 -- If you believe the Iraqi government, then there is not one dissenting voice in this country.
On Tuesday, voters were faced with a remarkably simple ballot: Should President Saddam Hussein be given another seven years in office? Yes or no. There were no alternative candidates on the ballot, and absolutely no campaigning against the entrenched Saddam.
Not surprisingly, the result was was unanimous.
According to Vice Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council Izzat Ibrahim, there are 11,445, 638 registered voters in Iraq. This morning he said that every single one of them turned out to vote, and every single one of them voted "Yes" for their president, Saddam Hussein.
A substantial number of voters didn't just tick a box, they pricked the pads of their thumbs and gave Saddam their vote in blood.
Donkey Vote?
But was all of this an emphatic endorsement for the Iraqi regime that the U.S. would like to change? Almost certainly not.
Genuine public opinion in this country is impossible to gauge. Outside polling stations, crowds chanted "Yes, yes to our leader Saddam Hussein," "Down, Down America," and "Bush, Bush, donkey, donkey." Saddam obviously benefits from an anti-Americanism stirred by years of sanctions and the immediate threat of war.
But the chanting children were cajoled by adults, and Saddam T-shirts were handed out by government officials.
ABCNEWS visited a polling station in Kerbala, about an hour's drive south of Baghdad. The ballot box was covered by silver gift paper with "congratulations" written all over it. On each side was a photograph of Saddam in the centre of a red paper heart.
Aside from the slot for ballots, it looked like a tasteless Valentine's Day gift.
The unspoken instruction of how to vote was not subtle.
Last night in Baghdad a sculptor finished work on a new likeness of Saddam. This time it's a gilt statue of Saddam the lawman. The new work is part of the referendum victory celebrations, and obviously was started weeks before a vote was even cast.
No Place for Dissent
However, we did find one man who voted "no." We followed him outside to ask why. "You are mistaken, I voted 'yes' for our great leader Saddam Hussein," he told the government minder who is our translator.
Did he lie to use? Was he scared of the minder? Did he mistakenly vote "no?" We'll never know. But he was the nearest thing to a dissenting voice that we found in Kerbala; a city that rebelled against Saddam in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War.
That rebellion was brutally crushed and, if appearances are to be believed, none of its spirit remains.
But why did our dissenting voter's ballot not show up in the tally announced this morning? The 100 percent result was not 99.9 recurring that was rounded up for ease. Iraq claims that every single person eligible to vote voted for Saddam.
But we know another man who didn't. When he heard the result this morning he said with a smile, "Well, they knew what I was thinking in my heart."
What’s the Message Here?
In Baghdad, Saddam's eldest son Uday arrived at a polling station driving a red Bentley. He was met by an ululating crowd. Outside that polling station, and others, were plastic chairs spread out beneath an awning.
Many ordinary people had walked in the searing heat to cast their vote and needed to rest before heading home.
Ibrahim claims that the referendum result is not meant to be a message for the U.S. The Iraqi government and press ignore the U.S. as much as they can. That's not always easy. But to suggest that the referendum was a message to President Bush would suggest that his administration has a legitimate role in the Arab World.
The referendum is a message from the Iraqi people to their leader, according to the official word in Baghdad. And it suggests there is no opposition in Iraq. Ibrahim told us so again this morning.
Try as we might, we have not found one person here who will speak against the regime. A Kurdish university lecturer told us that she is not even aware of Saddam's chemical attack on the Kurdish city of Halabja in 1988 that killed 5,000 people.
She says she knows that Saddam will bring his people through another war if it comes. She's with him.
And Abdul Sattar Jawad , a professor at the University of Baghdad, told us that the referendum is a "sign or a symbol of solidarity with the president in a time that is very critical."
Do they mean it? Did the voters yesterday really vote with the feelings in their hearts? I don't know.