Iraq's difficult date with democracy

For all that George Walker Bush never dared speak its name at last Thursday''s inauguration of his ''second coming'', all roads lead to Iraq. And that is where I''m headed. For, next Sunday, that country, one-time cradle of civilisation, goes to the polls.
For all that the world listened hard and thought deeply about the coming war for people''s liberty to be waged by America''s almost-Messianic president, he is saying something his chum Tony Blair recently intoned.Blair insisted it was wrong to categorise the American desire to extend democracy and human rights "throughout the Middle East (as a) neo-conservative agenda. Actually, if you put it in a different language, it is a progressive agenda."
So will this moral forward strategy for freedom come a cropper in Iraq and West Asia?
That reality is bleak. Iran is already accused of meddling too much and maliciously in Iraq''s choice of its men of tomorrow. Saudi Arabia and Syria are charged with continuing to offer moral and monetary support to Iraqi insurgents, at least partly in alarm at the prospect of democracy taking root in Baghdad. Turkey is anxious that post-election mayhem would give the Kurds and Turkomans a secessionist surge.
So far, there is little to offer hope to all who fear Iraq will not metamorphose, overnight, into Bush-Blair''s fancied democratic template for West Asia and "outposts of tyranny" all over the world. Had the US and UK not begun, 22 months ago, the onerous and ominously blood-stained process of literally bombing the Iraqi people into semi-democratic mode, they would have been the first to deplore the elections on behalf of "the international community".
And they would have been right. Just consider. Even though 7,785 candidates are competing for the 275-seat national assembly, this is campaigning by stealth. Or not at all. Security fears mean the candidates have not been named. The Independent Election Commission of Iraq (IECI) will publish the list some time soon, but don''t expect it tomorrow because it is anxious to avoid too many registered candidates suffering posthumous victories and defeats.
The IECI is rightly conscious of the challenges presented by a country that is being forced to chart its democratic destiny at the point of a foreign gun, against the gory backdrop of suicide bombings and insurgent activity, even as the minority Sunnis, one-fifth of the Iraqi people, threaten a boycott. If it weren''t so tragic, it would almost be laughable to see the chasm between Iraq as it heads for elections and Bush-Blair''s Olympian vision of aster-higher-stronger freedom. The United Nations, which is supposed to be the "principal" agency supervising the polls, is hardly in evidence.
The UN''s chief election official, Colombian Carlos Valenzuela, who has helped run 14 elections in other parts of the world, has already described the vote as a "daunting challenge". Both UN and Iraqi election officials admit the unique difficulties of holding a poll in which it''s not just candidates at risk. The voters are too. Protecting the voter is a looming problem because Iraq will start its democratic millennium by using visible, indelible ink to prevent multiple voting, presumably by sections of a Shia majority drunk on the prospect of the sudden elevation to power.
Come January 30 and that visible indelible ink stain on the Iraqi finger will be like the mark of Cain. But, please God, not quite as murderous?