An Ironic Value in Iraq’s Sham Vote : Election, though bogus, suggests even tyrants cannot fully ignore the drive for democracy

Somewhere in Iraq are 5,100 brave souls who voted “no” in Sunday’s referendum on whether Saddam Hussein should remain as president for (at least) seven more years. Their identities--assuming they even exist--are known only to God and the secret police.

That the regime claims that 99.96% of the nearly 8.4 million voters back the man who for 16 years has ruled the country with an iron hand is supposed to demonstrate a unanimity of support that other world leaders can only envy. That the regime slyly concedes that .04% of the electorate actually voted against Hussein simply establishes a renewed basis for persecuting and murdering all who may be suspected of being the leader’s enemies, and thus enemies of the newly reaffirmed popular will.

Of course it would be astonishing if 5,000 or even 50 Iraqis had the temerity to declare they really didn’t want Hussein to continue to lord it over them. The voting process assured that every eligible voter would appear at the polls and that his or her completed ballot would in most cases be visible to polling officials. Even more astonishing is the regime’s claim of a 99.47% turnout. That would suggest that both Iraq’s 3.8 million Kurds, heavily persecuted and in open revolt in the northern provinces, and the scorned Shiites in the south, who compose about 60% of Iraq’s population, had decided to let bygones be bygones and endorse the rule of the man they call the Butcher of Baghdad.

It hardly needs saying that the election, explicitly cited as validating Hussein’s political legitimacy, was a sham from start to finish, with the government’s numbers on both turnout and results having no credibility. Still, it was a vote not without significance. For what it showed is that in Iraq--as in Cuba or North Korea or any other country where the cult of personality demands overwhelming evidence of backing for the supreme leader--the power of the idea of a democratic vote is taken seriously. Maybe someday that idea can become a reality for Iraqis.