Iraqi sets up polling station in Egypt

Iraqi Zaim al-Khairallah, left, checks the passport of Iraqi Talib Murad, right, to take part in the forthcoming national elections at the Voluntary Iraqi Electoral Committee offices in downtown Cairo, Egypt, Monday, Jan. 17, 2005.
AP Photo/MUHAMMED MUHEISEN
 

Iraqi sets up polling station in Egypt
By SALAH NASRAWI, Associated Press Writer
Last Updated 3:24 pm PST Monday, January 17, 2005

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Once exiled and stripped of his Iraqi citizenship, Talib Murad now sees hope in his country's new democracy. He is so eager to take part in the Jan. 30 election for an Iraqi national assembly that he has set up his own polling station after learning that Egypt, where he lives, is not one of the 14 countries designated for voting by expatriate Iraqis.
"I have waited so long for this moment to come, but when it came it was all frustration and despair," he said of his failed efforts to persuade organizers to include Egypt on the list of countries for overseas voting.

Murad is among 6,000 or so Iraqis living in Egypt who have found themselves without a local polling station to vote in their homeland's first election in 50 years. Iraqi activists estimate 1.5 million Iraqis live in countries with no access to polling stations, so will have to travel to another nation if they want to cast a ballot.

The International Organization for Migration, a Geneva-based nonprofit group supervising the out-of-country voting, says Iraqi election officials will not recognize results from outside the designated 14 countries.

However, officials in Iraq said they would make an effort to count such votes. Hussein Hindawi, head of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, said it was doing its best to allow voting for all Iraqis abroad.

"We will count each and every vote," he said. But he offered no details on how the commission would receive or count votes from outside the designated polling sites.

Still hopeful that they can have a say, Murad and other Iraqis are campaigning through direct contacts and the Internet to draw voters from Egypt's Iraqi community to his makeshift polling station in an old office of the now-defunct Iraqi News Agency.

"The election to me means that my family's tragedy should not be repeated. That can only be prevented if we have a democratically elected government," Murad said.

Murad is a member of the small Faili minority that was forced from Iraq after Saddam Hussein ordered the mass expulsion of Iraqi Shiite Kurds, denouncing them as alien Persians. Murad was stripped of his citizenship and spent more than 30 years in exile. After Saddam's ouster by the U.S.-led invasion, he restored his citizenship.

Inside Iraq, voters will go to the polls Jan. 30 to elect a 275-member assembly that will choose a president and two deputy presidents and also draft a constitution.

The International Organization for Migration expects about 1 million people to vote in the 14 countries - Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Iran, Jordan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Syria, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United States. The countries were chosen because they have large populations of expatriate Iraqis.

Registration began in those countries Monday, so Murad started registration at his Voluntary Iraqi Electoral Committee office in Cairo.

"Voting is our legitimate right to help in rebuilding our devastated country," said fellow campaigner Zaim al-Khairallah.

http://www.sacbee.com/24hour/special_reports/iraq/story/2024631p-10058274c.html