Mainstream media has covered nothing about the Iraqi election except for the superficial photo ops of people voting. But who were the candidates who won, and what are their party platforms? And most of all, does this election really mean anything, or is it just for show?
Naomi Klein of The Nation magazine brings us the real news.
The election results are in: Iraqis voted overwhelmingly to throw out the US-installed government of Iyad Allawi, who refused to ask the United States to leave. A decisive majority voted for the United Iraqi Alliance; the second plank in the UIA platform calls for "a timetable for the withdrawal of the multinational forces from Iraq."
More below...
While we here in the US try to decide what our platform is, the United Iraqi Alliance - the overwhelming winner - has already come up with a kickass platform that the US Dems could only hope to dream up.
There are more single-digit messages embedded in the winning coalition's platform. Some highlights: "Adopting a social security system under which the state guarantees a job for every fit Iraqi...and offers facilities to citizens to build homes." The UIA also pledges "to write off Iraq's debts, cancel reparations and use the oil wealth for economic development projects." In short, Iraqis voted to repudiate the radical free-market policies imposed by former chief US envoy Paul Bremer and locked in by a recent agreement with the International Monetary Fund.
The platform also includes healthcare for all, a promise to protect people from industrial and military pollution, free education for all (including college) that emphasizes science and objectivity, guaranteed employment for all those who are able, and supports equality for women.
However, there's a glitch. The Bush Administration ain't dummies, even if they play ones on TV...
l-Mahdi is the Bush Administration's Trojan horse in the UIA. (You didn't think they were going to put all their money on Allawi, did you?)
...he told a gathering of the American Enterprise Institute that he planned to "restructure and privatize [Iraq's] state-owned enterprises," and in December he made another trip to Washington to unveil plans for a new oil law "very promising to the American investors."
On troop withdrawal, al-Mahdi sounds nothing like his party's platform and instead appears to be channeling Dick Cheney on Fox News: "When the Americans go will depend on when our own forces are ready and on how the resistance responds after the elections."
So, the Iraqi elections were about as pointless as the US elections. It doesn't really matter what the people want because the results are whatever the people who own the guns, the money, and the media want.