Majid Hamoud lugged his TV set to Jama’a Souk along a busy Baghdad highway and sold it for about $6 to buy food for his wife and six children.
“This is the last thing I have. I have sold everything else,” said Hamoud, whose country has suffered under crippling economic sanctions imposed after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990.
“I already sold all my furniture, my refrigerator, my carpets,” Hamoud said Friday. “There is nothing left in my house.”
But like many Iraqis, Hamoud doesn’t blame Saddam Hussein for Iraq’s troubles and the fact his children must survive on government rations, bread and tea.
In fact, he plans to vote “yes” on a referendum Sunday to endorse Hussein to serve as president for another seven years.
The plebiscite is a diversion from five years of increasingly desperate life under UN sanctions. Destitute Iraqis are selling personal possessions at street markets to get money for food. Child mortality is up more than 15 percent this year compared with 1990, mainly due to malnutrition and lack of medicine, according to health officials.
Prices have gone up an estimated 1 million percent since 1990, and many Iraqis carry sacks of their devalued currency to markets when buying anything these days, doling it out in bricks of a hundred 250-dinar bills worth about $10. Years ago one dinar was worth $1. Today $1 buys 2,500 dinars on the black market.
Hussein has made no campaign speeches, appearances or appeals to voters, but his election appears the surest of bets: His is the only name on the ballot.
To the U.S. and its allies suspicious of Iraq, the plebiscite is seen as a blatant, cynical ploy by Hussein, absolute ruler since 1979, to legitimize his claim to power.
Many Iraqis insist they adore him, but many more will vote for Hussein out of fear, mindful they live in a police state where dissent has been punished harshly. Ironically, Iraq’s attempt to showcase its democracy in action actually has drawn the world’s attention to how little freedom exists there.
In recent days, billowing banners and handpainted signs have appeared, strung above the crowded souks of this gloomy capital and across economically devastated Iraq, to deliver the same message: “Yes Yes Yes to the Leader Saddam Hussein.”
Even Iraqi children are chanting “nam” (Arabic for yes) with glee in their schools: “Nam Nam Nam, Chief Sad-dam.” Hussein’s life-size poster is plastered all over the walls, inside and out, of the 1,662 polling stations around the country.
Voters will be given a chance to say “Nam” or “La” (Yes or No) in a secret ballot in halls festooned with banners heralding messages such as: “All Iraq says `Yes’ for the dignity of the country.”
One banner in a Baghdad polling station reads: “The enemy wants to push our leader out of power, but we will say `Yes Yes’ to our leader.”
Iraqis are accustomed to having few choices and following orders. Asked if they will vote “no,” most Baghdad voters shake their heads as if it were unthinkable. Privately, some admit they have no choice.
The Iraqi government has long promised to move toward a constitutional democracy with a true multiparty system, political pluralism and a free press.
But Hussein’s ruling Ba’ath Party still calls all the shots.
“The referendum is a sham,” said one Western diplomat last week, “but it is perhaps the first time they are making Iraqis focus on the idea of democracy. It may represent the beginning of a new process.”
Hussein announced the referendum last month after the embarrassing August defections to Jordan of two of his daughters and their prominent husbands.
One of his defecting sons-in-law, Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel Hassan al-Majid, mastermind of Iraq’s weapons program, repeatedly has called for the president’s overthrow since then.
“The referendum is a face lift after the trauma of the defection,” said another Western observer, expressing the common view that Hussein is using the cosmetic vote to validate his leadership, underscore his authority and signal the world that rumors of his imminent fall are unfounded.
“Democracy is a comprehensive outlook to life,” Hussein is quoted as saying in a pamphlet on the referendum released last week that blames delays in Iraqi democracy on the U.S. It cites American “military agression” and pressure on the UN to continue the sanctions.
While Hussein has been the main target of sanctions, he appears to be maintaining his grip on power while the sanctions crush his people and bankrupt his nation.
The Iraqi government has maintained all along that it has complied with UN arms monitors and demands to inspect its post-Persian Gulf war arsenal, but UN weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus presented quite a different picture when he submitted his report last week to the Security Council.
Ekeus said Iraq “gravely misled” inspectors, concealed arms from them and developed far more powerful weapons than had been suspected.
Now sanctions are likely to be extended.
Still, for many Iraqis voting Sunday in the first referendum asking them to voice their support for a president, the thrill of tasting even this parody of democracy is momentous.
“I say, `Yes! Yes! for Saddam.’ We don’t have any alternative,” explained Zaineb Haider, 40, brushing flies from her black headscarf as she crouched against a wall nearby selling hand-made bath mitts. “We have to go. He is our president and we have to elect him.”
But others in Baghdad were less enthusiastic, admitting sheepishly they were going to vote for Hussein mainly to avoid any problems with the unforgiving state.
“What difference will the vote make?” asked one Iraqi woman. She admitted she would vote “yes” to Hussein, but only to avoid problems with the government.
The woman rejected speculation the plebiscite might be the first step in a long-awaited democratization process in Iraq, noting, “It won’t happen.” She said she is planning to leave Iraq for good as soon as possible.
Other Iraqis echoed that view, including one woman who asked, “What is this `Yes. Yes. Yes?’ What does it mean?” She pointed out that Iraqis are more concerned about their dire, worsening economic situation.
“The sanctions are making us suffer, not Saddam,” she added, accusing the West of being “immoral” for giving Iraq meager humanitarian assistance while allowing the sanctions to hurt ordinary Iraqis.
One reason Iraqis take the plebiscite seriously is that the government used food rationing rosters to draw up voter registration lists.
Most families in Iraq get government-subsidized rations, leaving many voters fearful a “no” vote might cost them crucial supplies of flour, rice, oil and sugar that comprise about 50 percent of their diet.
Noted one Western diplomat: “This is still a totalitarian government.”
