Iraq prepares to vote

There is little doubt as to the outcome of this election

By Roger Hearing BBC correspondent in Baghdad

To US President George W Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, Saddam Hussein may be a ruthless and oppressive dictator.

But on Tuesday the people of Iraq get a chance to give their verdict on the man who has been their president since 1979.

In a countrywide referendum, Iraqis will be given a piece of paper with the name Saddam Hussein and boxes to mark yes or no.

Everyone over 18 is required to vote, and their names are ticked off on a register.

It is a secret ballot, but many Iraqis believe those who vote no can easily be traced.

Opponents, I was told, usually find it prudent to put in a blank voting paper.

Victory expected

The question voters are answering is whether Saddam Hussein should be given a further seven-year term as president.

Preparations are underway ahead of Tuesday's vote

He has already been proposed by the country's highest decision-making body, the Revolutionary Command Council, and seconded by Iraq's parliament.

The pattern is the same as in 1995, when his official tally was 99.96% of the vote. A similar result is expected this time.

In Baghdad, posters and slogans have been put up, in English and French as well as Arabic, praising Saddam Hussein - "Yes, Yes, Yes to our President".

But so far it has been a curiously muted election, reflecting perhaps the growing prospect of another war.

Most Iraqis will be less interested in the result of Tuesday's poll than in the outcome of another vote - the decision of the UN Security Council

To most Iraqis, that war now seems unavoidable, and few expect the United Nations weapons inspectors to return to their white four-wheel drives which have been gathering dust at the UN headquarters on the city's eastern outskirts since they left in 1998.

One area that will not be voting is Iraqi Kurdistan, from which, since 1991, Iraqi forces have been kept out by American and British warplanes.

The two main Kurdish parties - the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) - have been running the zone around the towns of Dohuk, Suleimaniyah and Erbil without serious intervention from Baghdad since their revolt after the Gulf War.

'Heroic leader'

The case for re-electing Saddam Hussein, according to several prominent members of parliament and writers in the newspapers, is that he is a strong, even heroic leader, whom Iraq needs when the outside world is once again threatening its very existence - and that it would be unpatriotic not to give him full support in Iraq's hour of need.

The case against, rarely heard here, is that his period as president has been marked by an almost constant state of war and crisis - first the Iran-Iraq war, then the invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf War, and then 12 years of sanctions and international isolation.

There is also the fact that his once-rich country is a pale shadow of what it was when he began his presidency.

But most Iraqis will be less interested in the result of Tuesday's poll than in the outcome of another vote - the decision of the UN Security Council on a new resolution in the next few days that could have a much greater effect on the country's future.