Baghdad's Poor See Hope in Election

Ever since Naeif Katee lost both legs to a car bomb in east Baghdad in 2006, he has spent most of his time at home, unable to help his wife and four children scrape a living scavenging for bricks.

Despite his hardship, Katee was determined to vote in Iraq's national elections last week with the hope of improving the future of his impoverished family.

"On election day, I pushed my husband in his wheelchair to the polling station. My son wanted to vote, too, because he heard that is how we could have a home of our own forever. But the workers at the polling station said that a ten-year-old is too young to vote," Hanaa Salman, Katee's wife, said.

Katee's family, like many of Baghdad's poorest citizens, was swayed by the campaign pledges of prominent politicians who had visited the sprawling slums of the capital in search of votes. In Katee's home of Sadr City, an impoverished Shia district of Baghdad, as well as neighbourhoods such as Abu Disheer, Al-Tanak and Bab al-Sham, the turnout figures were some of the highest in Iraq.

"Participation was extremely high in poor districts, especially Sadr City. In some of these areas, the turnout was above 90 per cent. There are many reasons for their high turnout: religion, poverty, illiteracy, and because the poor are vulnerable to the promises of the politicians,” Hogar Chato, spokesman for Sun Network, an Iraqi elections watchdog, said.

He explained that their research indicated that religious people were more easily influenced by calls from clerics to vote, such as Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Hussaini al-Sistani’s appeal for all Iraqis to turn out for the elections. Uneducated or illiterate people also tended to cast their ballots because they perceived it as a duty and were similarly influenced by the encouragement of public figures.

Mahdi al-Allaq, head of Iraq's central statistics network, estimated that 23 per cent of Iraqis are considered poor, earning around 77,000 Iraqi dinars (65 US dollars) each month. Allaq told IWPR that nearly five per cent of the population is extremely poor, living on monthly incomes of less than 33,000 dinars.

“In Baghdad, extremely poor people’s homes are made of tin or mud; some live in tents made of cloth. There is no clean drinking water, no electricity, and there are swamps of dark water and trash everywhere around them," Ali al-Dejeli, deputy director of the social development NGO Tammoz, said.

“Ninety per cent of these people are illiterate, and they have no time to learn because they are trying so hard just to keep themselves and their families alive,” he added.

The parliamentary election was seen as critical to the development of Iraq.

While anti-Baathist rhetoric dominated the early days of the campaign, many politicians turned their attention to the country's poor by offering populist platforms and promises of improved livelihoods.

Political commentators believe that coalitions that do well in Baghdad – where 70 parliamentary seats were contested – will significantly improve their prospects of forming a new government.

“All the political parties, without exception, focused their campaigns on the poor areas of Baghdad with promises of better services, security, unemployment and higher minimum wages," Chato said.

For Katee, the main election issue was the hope of securing a home for his family. Since 2006, his six-member family has lived in a 15-square-metre mud hut covered by a sheet of tin in a section of Sadr City known as Rasheed camp. The squatters, the poorest of Sadr City's more than two million inhabitants, are known as motajawezeen.

"We voted for [Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's] State of Law list because he promised to grant motajawezeen the land they live on," Salman said.

Since he was elected in 2005, Maliki has allowed the squatters to remain on the land, and in the recent election campaign he promised to award them ownership of the dwelling for free.

“If a new government was to come into power, they will kick us out. All we have is this piece of land, and it’s all we want," Salman said.

Other residents of Sadr City have different demands, and expectations, for the politicians they chose to support.

"All we want is security, nothing more. Of course, we would like someone to care about our standard of living, but I really don't think anyone will," Ameen Jasim, a labourer who said he voted for the State of Law list.

"Before Maliki we were scared to go to work. But still I do not think he will reward me with a better life. After winning his position, he will forget about all the voices that granted him that post."

Hasanein Zedan, a student who works a night shift as a labourer to pay for his studies, has qualified optimism about the new government due to the failures of the past.

"I wish to have a better life. I want to have a job after I graduate. I do not expect politicians to make anything great for us but it would be a shame if we are kept in the same situation," he said. "They will have to improve things a little bit."

Sabah al-Saeidi, a candidate with the Iraqi National Alliance, was a politician who worked hard to earn the votes of the poor. His campaign posters read, "These are our banners, and this is your bread." They showed Saeidi's face next to a loaf of bread.

"Poor people are the real people of the county. They are our concern. A government will fail if it does not take care of its poor," Saeidi said.

Until poverty is addressed, some fear that families such as Katee's could be stuck in the cycle of impoverishment that will stretch to a new generation.

Katee's 10-year-old son, Ali, may be too young to vote but he has dreams of his own. He wants to attend school for the first time and someday get a job so he can buy a television for his sisters. Until then, he's content tagging along with his mother as she picks through rubble for the bricks that she sells in order to feed the family.

"I gather the bricks with her and guard her from strangers," Ali said. "A woman should be accompanied by a man when she goes out."

Abeer Mohammed, IWPR Iraq’s senior local editor, is based in Baghdad.