Impressions from Basra

"When it comes to electoral politics, Basra is indicative of what’s happening on the provincial level: voters are choosing local candidates that they are comfortable with. In Baghdad, the big names dominate politics, and thus the local voter’s attention would be drawn to names such as Maliki, Ja’afari, Allawi,…etc. But in Basra and elsewhere, these big names don’t feature on the campaign materials seen on the streets, so the voter is compelled to look into the backgrounds of the individual candidates rather than any broader political leanings.

For example, candidate no. 1 on the Iraqi National Alliance slate is Uday Awwad Kadhim, a 33-year-old Sadrist who has almost no standing on a national level. But he’s known in Basra City as a competent and hardworking electrical engineer throughout the time he served as an overseer of the province’s electrical grid. The subtext, of course, is that he would give more electricity to ‘those from ‘Amara’, a reference to the migrants from ‘Amara (Maysan) province who populate the slums of Khamsa Meel, Gzeizeh, Hayyaniyah and other such neighborhoods that form the bulwark of Sadrist support in Basra. He was arrested in the aftermath of Maliki’s clampdown on the Mahdi Army in March 2008."
Talisman Gate