Poll Winners’ Party
‘PETER Snow has waved his arms like a whirling Dervish, David Dimbleby hasnt slept for 48 hours and the exit polls from Baghdad East spell bad news for the Sunnis.
| Gareth Gates’s supporters were disappointed |
Yes, democracy has come to Iraq and the unsurprising news in the Guardian is that the countrys Shia Muslims have won a landmark victory.
The paper says they sealed their historic political ascendancy, with more than four million (or 48%) of the population voting for them.
Of course, this is not a patch on the kind of figures Saddam Hussein used to pull in, the former dictator regularly polling 100% of the votes on a 100% turnout.
However, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, touted as the most likely prime minister of the new Iraq, promised to share power with ethnic and religious minorities.
We have a responsibility now to work together for the sake of the people, he said. They have made this magnificent gesture and we should all take it seriously and make it work.
And if Mr al-Jaafari wants evidence of what will happen if he fails, he need only look to the front page of the Independent and to another leader swept to power on a landslide.
That man is of course Our Beloved Leader, whose declining popularity is graphically represented below the papers headline, Blair: This Time Its Personal.
The Indy says the Prime Minister (whose net satisfaction rate has fallen from +60 in 1997 to -25 now) is trying to rebuild his jaded relationship with the electorate.
And what better way to do that than with a slice of humble pie, served up with lashings of syrup?
I understand why some people are angry, not just over Iraq but many of the difficult decisions we have made and, as ever, a lot of it is about me, he said.
For a political leader, doing the right thing in reality is only ever doing what I think is the right thing. And if youre not careful, doing the right thing becomes I know best.
And Tony doesnt know best. Which makes you wonder what hes doing as Prime Minister in the first place…’
Posted: 14th, February 2005 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
