Fig-leaf freedom - Brian Whitaker -Guradian UK

[patdem]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,1402529,00.html

Fig-leaf freedom

One election does not a democracy make, writes Brian Whitaker

Monday January 31, 2005

President George Bush has pronounced the election in Iraq a success. "The world is hearing the voice of freedom from the centre of the Middle East," he said yesterday.
Since this is more or less what he was bound to say anyway, the only surprise is that he waited until four hours after the polls had closed before saying it.

It's a curious sort of freedom where candidates cannot campaign openly for fear of their lives and where, despite the tightest security that the occupation armies and the Iraqi forces can provide - curfews, banning cars from the streets, intensive searches at polling stations, etc - more than 40 people still die.

Violence on that scale is by no means unusual at election time in other parts of the world. Four years ago, for instance, municipal elections in Yemen, where there was no insurgency, left 29 people dead.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,1402529,00.html