BAGHDAD, October 16 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, received a hundred percent vote from this people on Wednesday, October 16 as a London-based Iraqi opposition group slammed the referendum as an “illegitimate” event, claiming that terrified citizens voted out of fear of punishment.

Hussein did not just win all the votes in Tuesday’s presidential referendum, all eligible voters turned out too, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Ezzat Ibrahim, Saddam’s number two dubbed Saddam the “great leader” and announced: “The president, leader Saddam Hussein, God preserve him, has won 100 percent of the vote.”

Ibrahim, head of the committee supervising the referendum said that 11,445,638 people voted for him, a total turnout.

Anyone who went round a voting centre would have quickly understood that the officially “secret” ballot was anything but.

Some people went to vote and found they had already declared “yes” for Saddam, others voted in blood, hardly anyone was seen using private voting booths which were provided, reported AFP.

Even the president’s elder son Uday had a child vote in his place.

Iraq’s government had demanded a display of total support for Saddam, the sole candidate, at a time when Washington is trying to overthrow him and that is what the ruling Baath Party delivered.

Ibrahim himself, vice chairman of the Revolution Command Council, had already announced Tuesday night just as the polls were closing that Saddam had secured 100 percent of the vote.

“Turnout was absolute and the yes vote was absolute,” he said, adding “the people are voting unanimously for their leader.”

Certainly journalists could not find anyone who voted “no”. “If you want to say no, you stay at home,” the young man said.

Ibrahim described the referendum as “a unique experience in the world which foreigners, for whom 51 percent of the vote is enough to win an election, cannot explain.”

Non-Iraqis “cannot understand how a people, all of them, can vote unanimously for their leader,” he said.

“The democratic experience in Iraq is different from all others. It does not exist either in America or Vietnam, to take as examples two countries with antagonistic political systems.

“It is all the more unique because not one incident of any type troubled the voting process.”

The official Iraqi News Agency did however report that one person had been wounded in south Baghdad.

In the last and first referendum in Iraq in 1995, Saddam won an official 99.96 percent of the vote, but 3,052 people officially voted no

On Tuesday, a London-based Iraqi opposition group slammed the referendum as an “illegitimate” event, claiming that terrified citizens voted out of fear of punishment.

“If you don’t go to vote, they believe you are against the regime,” said Sharif Ali-Ben al-Hussein, president of the Iraqi National Congress (INC).

“They wouldn’t let someone they think is against the regime (go) without severe punishment.”

Al-Hussein said food coupons distributed by the government would be withheld from Iraqis who refused to vote.

An INC spokesman called the results of Tuesday’s vote, in which the ruling Baath Party sought to give Saddam a 100-percent success rate, “illegitimate” and a “joke”.

“Saddam is a totalitarian dictator, a megalomaniac,” the spokesman, who asked not to be named, said.

“People are scared. People will go and vote out of fear of reprisals. They could lose their ration, be arrested, intimidated.”

The officials said the vote, in which some Iraqis drew their own blood in order to mark their ballot, was not an overt sign of defiance in the face of threats from the United States.

“Iraqis look forward to having truly free elections with international monitors, not rigged by the Iraqi secret police,” al-Hussein added.