Monday, December 05, 2005
Iraqi democracy spreads to ... Jordan?
The caption to this story reads:Jordanians paste electoral posters on a bridge of former Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi reading, 'strong goverment, safe people, grown country ', referring to his electoral list for the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections, in Amman, Jordan, Sunday, Dec. 4, 2005.
Sabbah (who is a Palestinian Jordanian living in Bahrain) asks "In Amman, Jordan? Why God?" That is the question, isn't it? Electioneering, after all, is not exactly an ordinary sight in a monarchy. May I hazard to guess, though, that there are a great many Iraqis who have moved to Jordan, at least temporarily, to avoid the violence in the Sunni triangle. I believe that most -- if not all -- are eligible to vote on December 15, so these men are doing what comes naturally to any Western election campaign: campaigning among the expats.
This is especially interesting, insofar as Allawi is a secular candidate. It cannot even be said that these men are carrying the water of the local Islamists.
No wonder the Arab autocracies are working so hard to defeat democracy in Iraq -- they can't be having their subjects seeing all sorts of political freedom breaking out all over the place. Yes, how are they going to justify arresting democrats who are campaigning in a foreign election? How is that seditious?
We live in interesting times.
UPDATE: And Syria!
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis living in Syria will be able to vote in next week's general elections for Iraq national assembly elections at 11 voting centers, an Iraqi official said Monday. Omar Al-Alawi, Head of the Iraqi election Bureau in Syria at a news conference in Damascus on Monday, Dec.5, 2005, where he anounced the start of the election campaign in Syria for the Iraqi National Assembly elections to be held from Dec. 13-15. Alawi said that the Bureau oppened 11 voting centers in syria; 10 in Damascus and one in Aleppo northern Syria.
The Iraqi elections are creating the visible example of democracy in the Arab world without the peril of prosecution for sedition. Even if the king of Jordan and the fascists of Syria wish they could crack down, they know that the glare of media attention on Iraq would exact a terrible price in bad publicity throughout the Western world. Imagine how much the Arab governments loathe that this is happening, and imagine what they might do to see that it fails. The former is beautiful and inspiring, and the latter is daunting.
2 Comments:
By 
, at
Tue Dec 06, 02:23:00 AM:
Electioneering was and still is ordinary sight in the monarchy! Every parliamentary election, Jordan streets get filled with these ugly fat faces.
My point is something else. Read my comments here!
By , at
Tue Dec 06, 03:11:00 PM:
Jordanian authorities remove posters for Iraqi polls.
