New (Iraq) Election Issues: Electricity and Water

[papau]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/international/middleeast/26power.html?oref=login

POTHOLE POLITICS
New Election Issues: Electricity and Water
By JAMES GLANZ

Published: January 26, 2005


AGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 24 - The caretakers of Iraq's decrepit and constantly sabotaged infrastructure are learning that there are few jobs more thankless than running for a seat in the new government while struggling to keep the water, electricity and oil flowing for the citizens who will be casting their votes on Jan. 30.

Even in this truncated campaign, where ethnic identity is expected to trump all other issues, ministers are finding that they are facing voter scrutiny.

"Personally speaking, I will not vote for the list that holds electricity and oil ministers," said Ahmed Muhammad, a driver who had already waited three hours in a gas station line on Friday morning and was still nowhere close to the front.<snip>

The slide in his fortunes (Aiham Alsammarae, the electricity minister,running as a prominent member of the Independent Democrats ticket) began after electricity on the national grid started plummeting from a peak of about 5,300 megawatts in September. By November the number had fallen below the politically sensitive benchmark of 4,500 megawatts, the level before American-led forces invaded Iraq, and bottomed out in early and mid-January around 3,500 megawatts.

Since then, Dr. Alsammarae, who has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology, in Chicago, has been accused in the Arabic news media and cafe rumor mill of corruption and incompetence, not to speak of deliberately keeping the amount of electricity low. <snip>

There are benefits from this new political pressure, but they appear to be taking place out of the public eye. Iraqi engineers and government workers, for example, now repair damage from the attacks much more quickly than they did at the start of the sabotage more than a year ago.Although work on the water main took longer than citizens had hoped, the water began flowing again on Sunday, a week after the attack.<snip>