IRAQ/Kurdish area: With elections tomorrow in Iraq, it's carnival time in the Kurdish-controlled north, at least for the parties.
Protected from the violence in the rest of the country by efficient intelligence and 80,000 militiamen, faithful supporters drive in corteges down city streets from Dohuk to Sulaimaniyah, blaring horns and waving party flags.
Party-sponsored radio and television stations have given themselves over almost entirely to propaganda. "Dear uncle Jelal, dear uncle Jelal," boomed one particularly blatant singer, referring to the leader of the party which controls the southern half of Iraqi Kurdistan.
"Today is the day, today is Kurdistan's day", chanted another.
It's a sentiment that sums up well the attitudes of the vast majority of Kurds. At odds with Baghdad since the foundation of Iraq, and treated with increasing brutality by successive governments, they know the general elections are crucial to the defence of the autonomy they have enjoyed since 1991.
"The parliament Iraqis elect on Sunday will have until August 15th to draft Iraq's new constitution," explained Noshirwan Mustafa, founding member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two largest Kurdish parties. "We must be united, and we must be there in numbers." The Kurds, he added, would not accept anything less than a "democratic, pluralistic, parliamentary system in Iraq" and the inclusion of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk within the Kurdish federal region.
Ordinary Kurds agree. Many describe their vote as a patriotic obligation. But the fervour comes to an abrupt halt when talk turns to the other votes Kurds are expected to cast this weekend. Like other Iraqis, they will be choosing candidates for new provincial councils. Unlike the rest of the country, they are also expected to elect 111 deputies to the Kurdistan Regional Government in Erbil.
"100 per cent of Kurds will vote for the Baghdad parliament, but I don't think more than 20 per cent will bother with the Kurdistan elections," a Sulaimaniyah taxi-driver said.
Recent opinion polls published in the independent Kurdish newspaper Hawlati put abstention rates in the Kurdish provinces of Erbil and Sulaimaniyah at 20 and 30 per cent respectively.
This comparative lack of interest for political developments on home turf springs from several factors. There were municipal elections throughout Kurdish-controlled areas in 2000 and 2001: many complain they changed nothing.
But the greatest cause of cynicism - particularly among educated and younger Kurds - is the decision of the two largest parties, plus half a dozen smaller ones, to run for the Kurdistan parliament on a joint ticket.
"Democracy is about pluralism", says Amina Mahmud, lawyer and election monitor. "If Islamists and communists, socialists and nationalists can all gang up together, where's the pluralism gone?" Many Kurds, she adds, see the regional election coalition as "a ploy to legitimise the illegitimate" - 14 years of single-party rule.
It's an analysis broadly shared by Hawlati editor Assos Herdi. None of the senior Kurdish politicians, he points out, have put their names on the lists of parliamentary candidates.