Iraqi election workers raise a billboard for Allawi's party, hoping it will not be torn apart like others. (Reuters)

CAIRO, January 29 (IslamOnline.net) – At first glance one might reckon that the Iraqi elections, which are less than 24 hours to go, are already over or months away with many streets almost cleaned off campaigning billboards and candidates’ fliers.

Against a backdrop of deadly car bombs, threats to voters and charges of being unrepresentative and illegitimate, the Iraqi elections have been reduced to wall-to-wall advertising with TV screens emerging as the best means to communicate, The Washington Post reported on Saturday, January 29.

“We don't have the means to do anything else -- not rallies, not even billboards... because they were torn down by the other side,” said Adnan Janabi, campaign manager for the Iraqiya coalition of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

“So we are using the media. We are using television as the medium of choice.”

Allawi's coalition and other vying parties have been airing emotionally-charged and slick ads not only on Iraqi TV stations like the Iraqiya satellite channel but also on pan-Arab stations such as the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya.

“Yesterday they blew up a polling station,” a boy tells his grandfather in one such ad.

“Chaos and terror, that's what they want,” the old man answers. “Grandfather, we are scared.”

“Don't throw away your right,” he concludes.

The Independent last month called the Iraqi polls one of the most “secretive” in history.

“Iraqi television shows only the feet of election officials rather than their faces, because they are terrified of their identity being revealed. It will be a poll governed by fear,” said the British daily.

Only for Well-Off

A US Marine gives election flyers to residents in Al Anbar province. (Reuters)

But even the TV messages fail to reach out to a broad section of Iraqi society as electricity is rarely on for more than a few hours a day.

This means only well-off Iraqis with generators have access to the candidates’ televised platforms.

“Despite the blackouts, we are making enough coverage for what we call saturation,” Janabi said.

“Whenever electricity is on, some Iraqis will see our name.”

Lay people, in effect, have frequently complained that they were left in the dark as they virtually know nothing about the elections’ system.

A Dec. 26-Jan. 7 survey by the US-funded International Republican Institute found that while 64.5 percent of Iraqis were very likely to vote, 38.4 percent thought they were electing a president.

Even Iraqi émigrés are not showing avid interest in the vote to elect a 275-seat National Assembly that would be in charge of choosing a Presidency Council and drafting the country’s constitution.

They are confused by a plethora of slates and thousands of candidates they never heard of their names, not to mention their blueprints.

Not Like Hostages

The Washington-based National Democratic Institute (NDI), which is headed by former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, took pains in training Iraqi candidates not to look like hostages.

It offered political parties access to a three-person media center and trained candidates in body language and how to face the camera without being irritated or terrified.

“Some politicians are brand-new to this,” an institute official, who asked not to be named, told The Washington Post.

Asked about the NDI’s goal out of this, he replied: “How not to look like you've been taken hostage.”