By Christian Appel

The January elections in Iraq were portrayed and described by much of the international media as triumphs of democracy and freedom.

As many independent new media sources have shown, the elections were by far not fair, and the idea that the elections were rooted in introducing democracy to the Iraqi state was a concept that a large number of Iraqis do not themselves believe in.

A recent US-run poll of Baghdadis showed that one per cent agreed that the goal of the invasion was to bring democracy to Iraq. Five per cent thought the goal was to help Iraqis. The majority assumed the US wants to control Iraq’s resources and to use its new bases there to control the region. As Noam Chomsky stated in his article Imperial Presidency, Baghdadis, demonstrating insight far beyond the capacity of most Western journalists, felt that the US did want ‘democracy’, but not one that would allow Iraqis to run their lives “without US pressure and influence.”

In addition, further reporting on the opinions of Iraqi expatriates gave voice to their fears and doubts of the election. Unfortunately the accompanying articles of these expatriate profiles failed to criticize the elections despite the obvious concerns voiced by the Iraqi’s themselves. In fact, as Rohan Pearce’s article states, outside Iraq, only about 22% of potential expatriate voters cast a ballot, clearly showing that there was little confidence in the fairness of the elections among this population of Iraqis.

At the same time, the media has failed to report on many other aspects of the elections, particularly the U.S.’s behind-the-scenes role. Though the media did report on Iran’s influence in the election, as it financially supported a number of candidates with close ties to the ruling ayatollahs of Iran, the U.S.’s pushing of its own candidates went unreported.

Washington-funded organizations with long records of manipulating foreign democracies in favour of US interests are deeply involved in the election. The National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI), considered by some to be “extensions” of the state department, are part of a consortium to which the US government has provided over $80 million for political and electoral activities in Iraq. NDI is headed by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, while IRI is chaired by Republican Senator John McCain.

Professor William I. Robinson of the Global and International Studies Programme at the University of California stated to NewStandard reporters, “I suspect that [NDI and IRI] are trying to select individual leaders and organisations that are going to be very amenable to the US transnational project for Iraq.”

Robinson added that these leaders must be willing to engage in “pacifying the country militarily and legitimating the occupation and the formal electoral system”, the goal being to guarantee that Iraq is controlled by “economic, political and civic groups that are going to be favorable to Iraq’s integration into the global capitalist economy”.

In a search using the LexisNexis media database, it was found that no British or U.S newspapers have mentioned these NDI and IRI activities in the Iraqi election at any time over the last twelve months.

Finally, the actual coverage of the election by the corporate media was greatly affected by circumstances that only provided completely skewered perspectives of the success of the election and the reactions of the Iraqi people.

As Rohan Pearce reported in the Green Left Weekly, Western television news broadcasts were “awash with Iraqis ecstatically casting their ballots.”

However, in a January 29 panel on CNN’s International Correspondents program, Julian Manyon, Britain’s ITV Baghdad correspondent, revealed that Western TV reporters covering the election were being “limited to filming at only five polling stations”, out of 5244. When the list of “approved” polling stations was published, Manyon added, reporters found out that “four of those five polling stations are actually in Shia areas” which therefore meant that very little light was shed on whether Sunnis were voting and their reactions to the elections.

According to the Reuters news agency, while there were 63,000 polling booths throughout Iraq, there were only 33,763 Iraqi election monitors and 622 international monitors. Manyon told CNN: “It’s very difficult to see how these elections can live up to international standards in terms of dispassionate supervision and policing of the polls.” However, for the bulk of the Western corporate news media’s reporting, particularly on television, most commentators stuck to the White House’s script of January 30 being the “dawn” of Iraqi “democracy”.

Bibliography:

Iraq and Zimbabwe – A Tale of Two Elections,
April 13 2005

Unity in Deceit: The British Media and Iraq’s Election
January 20 2005

IRAQ: Have the elections saved the occupation?
Rohan Pearce
Green Left Weekly
February 9, 2005

Imperial Presidency
Noam Chomsky,
Canadian Dimension,
January/February 2005

Controversial U.S. Groups Operate Behind Scenes on Iraq Vote
Lisa Ashkenaz Croke and Brian Dominick
December 13, 2004