Saddam in a landslide
When it comes to political machines, nothing compares to the juggernaut powered by Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party in Iraq. The Iraqi dictator was up for reelection Tuesday and his party pulled out all the stops to ensure a comfortable margin of victory. This includes printing ballots featuring only Saddam’s name. The goal is to grab a higher percentage of support from “voters” than during Saddam’s last election in 1995 when he received only 99.96 percent of the vote. This year they expect nothing less than 100 percent.
No one’s ever accused Saddam “Landslide” Hussein of not setting high goals for himself. It makes you wonder if the 0.04 percent of the voters who didn’t cast a vote for Hussein seven years ago was shot, gassed, tortured or all three. Such a small percentage of dissent probably means that some wise-cracking Iraqis wrote in their own candidates as often happens here in the states. Often, the write-in votes include the likes of Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny or Alec Baldwin.
To sweeten the deal for the Iraqi voters, as if sparing their lives is not enough, the government provided sherbets, cookies and hot tea at local polling places items not enjoyed by the Iraqi public since the last election.
Saddam Hussein has no mentor in the Middle East. In fact, he has always fashioned his iron-fisted leadership after Josef Stalin. It was Stalin who conducted mass rallies in his own honor where peasants and local officials would clap and cheer as he made a grand entrance. These ovations would last for 30 to 40 minutes, sometimes longer. The reason no one wanted to be the first one to stop applauding. That was interpreted as a blatant display of disloyalty toward Stalin and it was rewarded with either a one-way trip to Siberia, or death or both.
So it appears that Hussein will garner 100 percent of the votes cast in his latest reelection. Let him relish in the moment of this achievement because this so-called election could very well be his last.