Background
The election was prompted by the August defection to Jordan of senior government officials Hussein Kamel al-Majid and Saddam Kamel and their wives. During the crisis that followed, Saddam took steps to control the damage; the referendum was an attempt to shore up his claim to legitimacy. [7] At a September 7 meeting of the RCC, an interim amendment to the Constitution was approved whereby its chairman would automatically assume the presidency, subject to approval of the National Assembly and endorsement by national plebiscite. Parliament approved his candidacy on September 10, setting the stage for the meticulously organised election. [6]
Prior to the election, Ba'ath Party members visited homes, making sure to ask if households had ration cards (at the time, food was scarce as a result of the Iraq sanctions); the clear implication was that the wrong kind of vote could mean no food. [8] Voters were required to name relatives on their ballots and, according to some opposition reports, were threatened with punishment against their families if they voted "no". In a November report, the UN Special Rapporteur noted that because of the intrusiveness of the security apparatus "virtually no citizen would risk demonstrating any opposition to the Presidency or Government—or would do so at his mortal peril"; [9] the notion that opponents would face some sort of retribution was shared by most observers. [10] During the election, which served to emphasize that the Baath Party and the RCC were the country's true centres of power, loyal and tenacious party cadres brought voters in droves to the polling stations, [11] themselves swamped with pro-Hussein propaganda. [12] The result confirmed that Iraqis' fear of Saddam was greater than the severe hardship that had resulted from the sanctions. [13]
Preparations
The campaign involved unending glorification of Saddam; for instance, General Ali Hassan al-Majid declared, "O lofty mountain! O glory of Iraq! By God we have always found you in the most difficult conditions a roaring lion and a courageous horseman, one of the few true men". [14] Saddam himself never appeared in public prior to the election, but paid supporters streamed through the streets, shouting "Naam, naam, Saddam" ("Yes, yes, Saddam"). A highlight came four days prior to the vote at an Iraq-Qatar football game, when a dejected, pensive-looking Uday Hussein (normally glamorized) was shown on television, upset by what the announcer claimed was a (probably fictitious) fire that Saddam had set to his expensive cars as punishment for attacking Watban Ibrahim al-Tikriti and for the defections; soon afterward, Uday's role was increased as he sought to lure the men and their wives back to Iraq. [3]
Confident of popular participation, the government invited some 500 foreign journalists to witness the exercise; turnout (at least in Baghdad) was large enough to impress the visiting reporters, although the official figure was doubtless exaggerated. [14] One Western ambassador was impressed by the show of force involved, including a unanimous vote from Karbala (centre of the 1991 Shiite uprising against Saddam): "If this referendum proves anything, it is that the party is firmly in control of Iraq and Saddam runs it with an iron fist. If they can organize a referendum like this in less than three weeks, mobilize party cadres in every village, hamlet, town and city, produce precise lists for eight million voters and march all of them to the polls to say 'yes' unanimously, it means they are not about to fall". [15]
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was an Iraqi politician and revolutionary who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 1979 to 2003. He also served as prime minister of Iraq from 1979 to 1991 and later from 1994 to 2003. He was a leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and later, the Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and its regional organization, the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, which espoused Ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism.
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Colonel General Hussein Kamel Hassan al-Majid was the son-in-law and first cousin once removed of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. He defected to Jordan and assisted United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection teams assigned to look for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He was killed the following year for betraying Saddam.
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A presidential referendum took place in Iraq on October 16, 2002. It was the second presidential election under the rule of Saddam Hussein. According to official statistics, the turnout was 100%, with all 11,445,638 Iraqis registered to vote having voted "yes" in a referendum whether to support another seven year-term for President Saddam Hussein, which would legally have ended in 2009.
Ba'athist Iraq, officially the Iraqi Republic (1968–1992) and later the Republic of Iraq (1992–2003), was the Iraqi state between 1968 and 2003 under the rule of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. This period began with high economic growth, but ended with the country facing severe levels of socio-political isolation and economic stagnation. By the late 1990s, the average annual income had decreased drastically due to a combination of external and internal factors. UNSC sanctions against Iraq, in particular, were widely criticized for negatively impacting the country's quality of life, prompting the establishment of the Oil-for-Food Programme. The Ba'athist period formally came to an end with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the Ba'ath Party has since been indefinitely banned across the country.
The Republic of Kuwait was a short-lived and self-styled republic formed in the aftermath of the invasion of Kuwait by Ba'athist Iraq during the early stages of the Gulf War. During the invasion, the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council stated that it had sent troops into the State of Kuwait to assist an internal coup d'état initiated by "Kuwaiti revolutionaries." A Provisional Government of Free Kuwait was set up on 4 August 1990 by the Iraqi authorities under the leadership of nine allegedly-Kuwaiti military officers led by Alaa Hussein Ali, who was given the posts of prime minister, commander-in-chief, minister of defense and minister of the interior.
Abd al-Khaliq al-Samarra'i was an Iraqi Ba'athist politician and leading member of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party in Iraq. He was a member of the Regional Command from 1964 to 1973, and considered a serious rival of Saddam Hussein for leadership of the civilian faction of the Ba'ath Party. He was arrested in 1973 for his alleged involvement in a plot to overthrow the government, and executed in 1979 by Hussein.
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