Elections

In May, our country had elections for Parliament.   

There are approximately 18 different political parties here.  Talk about a split vote!   

There are obviously 2-3 major parties that generally rule the outcome; however, after many years of unhappiness with the system, a couple of young, new parties have emerged.  They didn’t make a big splash this year, but in the years to come, maybe they will grow.

The propaganda and ads for elections are similar to ours, but a little more “in your face.”  Literally.  Instead of just a last name, each poster (which is LARGE) has a photograph of the candidate, their party, what number they are on the ballot, and other information I couldn’t read.  I would start reading at stop lights, but reading in Arabic script is not my strong suit, and even after I had pronounced the words, I wasn’t sure what they meant.

These posters are pretty big.  It's just hard to tell in these pictures.

Flags of different colors were hung everywhere.  Different colors of flags stand for different parties, so you can see, my area of town is saturated with one party.

We had some unusual rainstorms shortly after everything was hung up, and so people had to go around the city and re-hang quite a few.   

You can see the storm coming in.

I think the funniest thing about the elections was that every airport in the country was shut down from the 11^th to the 13^th.  The elections were on the 12^th, and the government didn’t want anyone leaving the country, so that everyone would vote.  

A friend of ours didn’t want to vote because he is sick of corrupt government, and apparently Parliament is a very high paying job with lots of perks, and they really only help themselves, in his opinion.  But in the end, he did decide to vote because he realized if he didn’t, his name might be used as an illegal “vote” anyway.   And since a semi-permanent ink remains on your finger for over a week, people would know if you voted or not.  Unfortunately, there was only about a 43% turnout, so I’m guessing not too many illegal votes were used.

So, sadly, just like America, a majority of the people still don't get out and vote.  

Maybe nobody trusts the system.

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