NYT: A Taste of Big-City Politicking in Basra

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/28/international/middleeast/28basra.html



A Taste of Big-City Politicking in Basra
By JAMES GLANZ

Published: January 28, 2005

ASRA, Iraq, Jan. 27 - A convoy of flag-bedecked sedans and pickup trucks, packed with cheering campaigners, nosed its way through the this southern Iraqi city on Thursday, accompanied by a pop-music-style refrain, a paean to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country's most important Shiite cleric.

Campaigning in much of Iraq is a furtive, life-threatening affair, best done on the quiet, if at all. Not so in the south, where the party identified with Ayatollah Sistani, symbolized by a burning candle and called the United Iraqi Coalition List, is one of dozens stumping openly and sometimes raucously.

With candidates and party workers still spray-painting slogans, handing out literature, debating on the radio and shouting through speakers on the last day before the campaigns are supposed to shut down, it was almost possible to forget that this election is taking place in a country still torn by war.

"Thanks to God, the security situation in Basra is good, and better than the other provinces," said Ali Resan, a government worker who was spraying green paint onto a rock wall. Mr. Resan, who favors another party, the National Brotherhood, in local elections, gestured with pride to members of Hezbollah - an Iraqi offshoot of the radical Lebanese Shiite group - who were painting their own slogans on the same wall a few feet away. The juxtaposition "confirms the meaning of freedom and democracy," Mr. Resan said.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/28/international/middleeast/28basra.html