They were hard times for him and for us.
He had lost a war and was betrayed by his family and we were angry and exhausted from the war and embargo, and depressed from the economic recession.
We desperately needed action and he knew exactly what should be done.
It was just a normal day in 1995, when a meeting of the Revolutionary Command Council was broadcasted on TV. Nothing unusual on the evening program, but the announcement at the end was rather unexpected: The Iraqi people will be able to prove to the whole world their love and support to the president by a presidential election.
Wow, what a phrase “presidential election”.
I was surely not the only one in Iraq who never thought of hearing that kind of announcement. We were surprised and started puzzling; “Will there be more than one candidate?”, “Who is that crazy to run against him?”, “Maybe some fake candidates will be assigned just for the show?”, “What if he really allowed others to run for elections and one of them won the election? Would he concede?”, “Is it a planned act to hand over the power to one of his sons?”, “Is he tired and willing to resign?”, “Is it a clever move to get the UN’s attention and end the embargo?”
So many questions on everyone’s mind. Fortunately we did not have to wait for long to get the answers.
Soon the rules of the game were announced. There will be no other candidates than Saddam Husain himself. The election will be on October 15th and the Iraqis will have to answer one question with “yes” or “no”
The question was: “هل توافق على أن يكون الرئيس صدام حسين رئيساً للجمهورية؟”
Which translates into: “Do you agree that President Saddam Hussein be the President of the Republic?”
Not really a lot of options to choose from, but at least we knew he still held on to power and he was not handing it over to one of his two sons. At least not for now.
So, basically it was a referendum rather than an election. I didn’t really know the difference between the two words before that event.
Anyway, the preparation started and the streets were filled with people shouting “yes, yes, to our leader Saddam Husain”.
It was like a competition for who shows the greatest support. Praising songs and poems were broadcasted on the radio and TV the whole day, as well as interviews showing people on the streets promising eternal loyalty to the president.
The members of the Ba’ath party visited each home and registered the residents eligible to vote.
Every Iraqi citizen over 18, in a stable mental health and without criminal record was allowed to vote.
So for our household, all three of us were invited to vote in a voting centre, that was in a primary school nearby.
Before the Ba’ath party men left, one of them said: “of course we are sure you will make the right choice on the voting day”.
Meanwhile rumors about planned manipulation of the referendum started to circulate; stories like: “They will have cameras in the voting booths and “no”-voters will be immediately imprisoned” or “Someone will check every envelope as soon as it’s thrown in the box to identify the people voting “no” and to punish them later” were spread around among the citizens.
Soon, the 15th of October came and it was one big party day in Iraq. Music was playing in front of the voting centres. Some people were showing their loyalty by marking the “yes” space on the paper with a bloody fingerprint instead of making the cross with a pen.
The election officials were very helpful and friendly. I went into the booth, made my cross on „yes“, gave the paper in the envelope and dropped it in the voting box.
Why “yes”? Well, what was the other option?
I really searched for cameras in the booth but didn’t find any. If they were there, they must have been extremely tiny. I doubt we had such technology then, but why play with fire.
I even don’t think anyone had the chance to open the box after each voter, since the people were coming and going continuously, and the committee was never alone.
Everything seemed to match the international standards.
Soon, the counting started, and our district had 100% “yes” votes. The only problem was that I knew at least two in our neighborhood who swore that they had voted “no”.
Manipulating was easier than we thought. The “no’s” were just not counted. No district wanted to have the most negative voters.
One of our relatives was so upset her “no“ was not considered, that she almost reported herself.
The next day, the final count was published. 99.96% voted “yes”. This was the result of the votes of about 8 million Iraqis. In the evening, a song was run on TV that started with the phrase: “ninety nine and ninety six percent …“ this song was played for so long, that I don’t think I would ever forget the result of this referendum.
Saddam showed up on TV happy and satisfied. At least we didn’t disappoint him the way his sons-in-law did. And who knows maybe he really thought the result was out of pure love.
There was one more referendum before 2003, but I don’t have a lot of memories of it, maybe because it wasn’t that spectacular anymore or because the drums of war were beating too loud that I was distracted.
Note: looking up the dates before writing this story, I read the Wikipedia article of the referendum. I noticed two things: first, the Arabic article was very short and had poor information, which surprised me because who, if not Iraqis, should write the full and exact facts about the country.
After reading the terms of editing Wikipedia articles, it was clear that being a time witness is not an acceptable reference. One must write a book first and then refer to it.
Second: in the English article that was quite long and detailed, it was written that: “Saddam himself never appeared in public prior to the election, but paid supporters streamed through the streets, shouting „Naam, naam, Saddam“ („Yes, yes, Saddam“)”
The people were never paid; they were instructed to show support and they did. Mostly the people on the street were school children who were happy to miss class, the district Ba’ath party members and the labor unions.