Poll Party

NAJAF, IRAQ - Shortly after 7a.m., voters began trickling past the security guards, under the red and blue streamers decorating Barada Elementary School. In the women's voting room, a parade of black abayas swelled as the hours went on.

An elderly woman, eager to be the first on her block to vote, clutched a laminated card with the symbol of the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite list that almost certainly won the most votes here in Sunday's election to select Iraq's 275-member transitional national assembly.

The woman was turned away when poll workers learned she couldn't read, sent to fetch someone to help her mark the extensive ballot of 111 lists. But that didn't affect the mood of excitement and defiance in this polling station and throughout this southern Iraqi city that suffered under Saddam Hussein.

A second woman teetered up to the registration desk and greeted the poll worker: "Peace be upon you and death to the Baath," she said.

Najaf, the shrine city that serves as the symbolic heart of Shiite Islam, came out in force Sunday to vote in an election that many here hope will put Mr. Hussein and his Sunni-dominated Baath Party safely into history.

While Iraq's majority Shiite Arabs also hope for better government and a share of power that reflects their status as Iraq's majority, there seemed to be something cathartic in the act of voting, which combined a rejection of the past with hopes for a safer future.

Unlike Baghdad and other points north, where voting was plagued by violence and the doubts of Sunni Arabs about their position in society, turnout here appears to have been massive, close to 80 percent, according to preliminary estimates. Families poured out into the blockaded and peaceful streets and many proudly displayed their stained fingers – ink was used to prevent voting twice – to passersby.

"This is an enormous day for us. Finally, we're able to vote for people we know, people from Najaf who we can judge by words and deeds,'' says Hasan Salim, a carpenter who says he woke up at 6 a.m. thinking of his two dead brothers, lost to Hussein's regime.

Thousands of Najaf's sons died in the Iran-Iraq war and much of its old quarter was leveled by Hussein after a 1991 uprising. Its citizens were frequently punished for failing to join the regime's Baath Party.

In Najaf and across much of the Shiite south, the determination not to be abused again appears to have coalesced behind the United Iraqi Alliance, the electoral list sponsored by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani that includes most of Iraq's Shiite political parties and movements.

Ayatollah Sistani is Iraq's most revered religious figure, and his clout, combined with Shiite demographics, should leave Shiites with the most seats in the National Assembly that will write Iraq's new constitution. Shiites make up about 60 percent of the country's population, but candidates favored by Shiite voters will probably take more than 60 percent of the seats in the assembly, since turnout in many Sunni Arab areas was low.

"I feel the new government will write a constitution that gives us our rights,'' says Mr. Salim. "The old regime kept Shiites from going to their shrines, they followed me around just because I'm a Shiite, and now all of that is going to stop."

To be sure, that constitution will be written after months of difficult negotiations. The question of how much autonomy should be given to ethnic Kurds in the north and how much Islam should shape what has been a secular state could prove vexing.

Many of the southern Shiites are religiously and culturally conservative, something Salim points out while explaining the vote's importance. "Even my wife went out to vote today. I usually keep her at home, but I made an exception because this is so important."