A prisoner from Basra voting in the provincial Elections taking place in Iraq today. Early voting has been calm apart from Tikrit, where three mortar shells were fired into areas near voting booths. No one was injured. Not bad for a war ravaged country like Iraq. As Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told reporters gathered at the polling station, the election is evidence that Iraqi people live under a high level of safety (at least, to a large extent I guess).

This is the first provincial elections held after the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime that was staged in January 2005. After the developments of the last three years on various levels, this provincial vote will be a gauge of the country’s direction politically and a guide to how the parliamentary elections will turn out later this year.

The results should spell out the status of the Sunni Arab “awakening” movement and the popularity of the Shiite factions, such as those backing Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

As Staffan de Mistura, the top U.N. official in Iraq said to CNN,”It is the opportunity for the Iraqis to show that democracy can go forward, and we can move forward from bullets to ballots”.

Via : CNN