World reaction to the Iraq election

• Jan 31, 2005 | Mannheim | 09:15 a.m. ET

German opponents to war applaud turnout

Andy Eckardt

As the last expatriate Iraqi voted at the polling station in Mannheim, Germany, on Sunday afternoon, Thomas Holzer from the International Office for Migration — the organizers of the election outside Iraq — gave a big sigh of relief.

"I think we can be quite happy with the turnout in Germany," he said. "At the end of the day, we believe that 90 percent of the registered voters will have actually cast their ballots in this historic event."

Nearly 50 percent of the total estimated number of eligible voters in Germany had registered at the four polling stations in Germany over the past weeks. Most of the Iraqis who arrived in Mannheim celebrated the day like a national holiday, often dancing and singing after they handed in their vote.

Noteworthy were the Kurdish women, dressed up in colorful traditional clothes, who patiently waited in line outside in the cold, while security checks were conducted.

Alzaidi Abdul, a Shiite, who is originally from the Iraqi town of Nasiriyah, traveled with friends and family all the way from Lausanne, Switzerland. "Our country's future is at stake and that is why it was important for all of us to come here," Abdul said.

On Monday, the headlines in German newspapers and television newscasts also reflected the historic nature of this election, and applauded the strong voter turnout, especially inside Iraq.

"Millions of Iraqis defy terror" read the front page headline of Germany's Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper and another nationwide newspaper, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, wrote "Larger turnout than expected — voters in Iraq brave terror attacks.”

Most of the country's leading newspapers dedicated entire pages to the story, giving detailed insight into the different groups that were listed, focusing on the strong role of the Kurds and Shiites in the democratic election.

Despite leading international opposition to the war in Iraq, German officials hailed the elections.

"The decision of many Iraqis to go to the polls deserves very great recognition," German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told reporters in Brussels. "The challenge of putting Iraq on a stable democratic footing is one we must all take on together — within the political limits we have set," he said, reaffirming Germany's refusal to send troops to Iraq.

In Mannheim, organizers immediately started counting the votes, the majority of helpers being Iraqi nationals themselves. "We hope to be able to count all of the votes in Germany by Tuesday, maybe Wednesday at the latest," Holzer told MSNBC. "Except for a few small verbal arguments between ethnic groups, everything went very smoothly here," he said.

• Jan 31, 2005 | Moscow | 07:45 a.m. ET

Russians skeptical of the legitimacy of vote

Judy Augsburger

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday praised the elections in Iraq as a step forward, but Russians on the streets of Moscow were highly skeptical that the election results were fair.

"The conditions in which the elections were held were difficult, to say the least," Putin told Russian Cabinet members, "Nevertheless, it is a step in the right direction and a positive event."

The Russian foreign ministry expressed regret over the low turnout among Sunni voters, and stressed that Sunnis must be represented in the new government.

"The most difficult task lies ahead — to make sure the results of the elections have a stabilizing effect on the situation in the country," the ministry said in a statement. "If other political forces feel removed from state affairs, this will seriously hamper solution of the most difficult problems of the transition period."

Russian television channels also focused on the absence of Sunni voters. Russia’s channel one stressed Sunni dissatisfaction with the results of the election and warned of a split in Iraqi society serious enough to cause civil war.

On Moscow's streets, Russians regarded the elections with great skepticism. Many commented that the voter turnout was much too high to believe, especially given the danger surrounding the polling stations.

"I think that it was faked," Dmitry Lazarov, an 18-year-old Moscow student said. "When there is war in the country, I think that it's impossible for such a great percentage of people to go to elections. Like they do here in some of the Russian republics, and Chechnya, they fake those sheets of paper when people sign their votes, and they make too many of them, more votes than people who voted," he explained.

Grisha Cheredov, a fellow student, agreed. "It's not safe to go outside there, so a few people were just told that they should go there for show. It was not a real election," he said.

Such cynicism about elections is typical in Russia due to its own problematic elections.

Only last year, Putin's overwhelming reelection was marred by allegations of massive ballot box stuffing and voter fraud. Elections in the neighboring former Soviet republics, from Central Asia, to Georgia, to the recent election in Ukraine also were marred by serious fraud.

Other Russians voiced skepticism that democratic elections could be held in an occupied Iraq.

"I think it's a bluff, you know, a bluff. It's not a real election," said Teymi Haslanbeka, a professor of Arabic language at Moscow's Lomonosov Linguistic Institute.

"The American army, they are controlling everything in this country. So now, it's not a democracy. Not in our understanding of democracy," explained Haslanbeka, "it's an import from another country. American democracy, or even a European-style of democracy, you can't use it in the Arab world. Because the Arab world is an Oriental world. It's not a Western country, it's another kind of country. The American Army must go out of Iraq and then maybe the Iraqis can organize something like this on their own the second time."

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