Baghdad Poor Pounce on Election Flotsam

The hours after Iraq's parliamentary election were a tense time for Baghdad resident Hasan Obaid, but his anxiety had little to do with politics.

The 49-year-old father waited out the election curfew in silence before slipping out of the bare mud-brick home, where his wife and eight children were sleeping, to go hunting for a roof.

"I could barely sleep on the night of election day. I dreamed of how much scrap metal I would be able to get from the leftovers of the big election billboards. I wanted to make a ceiling for the mud room I share with my family. I will sell the rest of it," said Obaid as he tugged a large metal frame across railroad tracks near his home.

In the weeks ahead of the vote earlier this month, Baghdad streets were cluttered with thousands of billboards each adorned with the image and campaign slogan of one of the hundreds of politicians vying for the capital's 70 seats in parliament.

For Obaid and other impoverished residents of Baghdad's makeshift slums, Iraq's election campaign provided a bonanza of building materials.

The ten-metre-long metal billboard frames are large enough to shield families from the summer heat, while other pieces of wood and scrap metal are used to reinforce walls or sold to buy food.

Many Baghdad residents were stunned by the massive scale of campaigning and the enormous amount of money spent on the billboards and banners that dominated intersections, main streets and even shop fronts and homes in the capital.

While campaign spending figures have not been made public, some have speculated that the major parties forked out as much as hundreds of millions of dollars on campaign paraphernalia.

Tariq Mamouri, an analyst with al-Mada Cultural Organisation in Baghdad, said political parties and candidates were reluctant to release details about their financing because “it would greatly impact [their] popularity” if the public knew how much was spent.

Because no law bars politicians from accepting financial help from abroad, some experts, including Mamouri, believe money was pumped into campaign coffers by interested international governments and companies.

Izzat al-Shahbandar, an independent candidate from the State of Law coalition, said big political blocs paid for some of their candidates' campaigns while independent contenders paid for their own.

"The average of cost spent on campaigning ranged between 10,000 and 30,000 US dollars. If the candidate used satellite channels, the cost might hit the millions of dollars," said Shahbandar, who estimated his own campaign spending, including ads, posters and billboards at roughly 10,000 dollars.

Munthir Ahmad, a billboard maker at the Baghdad Printing House, put the price higher. By his estimate, candidates from the big coalitions spent roughly 50,000 dollars each on billboards at his shop.

Baghdad residents said the billboards disappeared rapidly in the days following the election.

"Since dawn after the election day (March 8), I have seen a large number of people grabbing and carrying the metal billboards of the candidates. It is election gift to the poor and disadvantaged people," said bus driver Muhammad Ali Muhsin, 58, with a shrug.

Obaid came to Baghdad from Maysan six years ago and has been unable to find work. He lives with thousands of other families in ramshackle dwellings in the Abu Disheer district near the railways in south Baghdad.

Along with his children, Obaid sifts through rubbish mounds and landfills each day, living on what they are able to scavenge. He voted in the election - although he declined to specify for which party - but said he was disappointed in the campaign spending.

“It would have been better for the politicians to spend their huge campaign funds on us and rescue us from the shantytowns,” he said. “In return we would vote for them. This is best way to campaign: help the poor.”

Daud Salman is an IWPR-trained journalist in Baghdad.
Ali Kareem, an IWPR-trained journalist, contributed to this report from Baghdad.