IRAQ: Mock election posters are popping up around Baghdad

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Iraq’s local elections on Saturday aren’t all serious.

With a blinding array of party names, photos, campaign numbers and slogans such as Change and Integrity, some Iraqis have taken to making their own mock campaign posters for fun.

A photographer named Saheb in Baghdad decided to surprise a friend by creating a campaign poster from a picture he had snapped of his friend.

“I designed an election poster. I put the name of my friend. I gave his party a list number,” Saheb said.

The poster had the number 1/9 in a tribute to the police comedy ‘Naked Gun 2 and a 1/2.’ The fake poster read, “Vote for your independent candidate, a writer, a journalist and an engineer.” To make it more provocative, Saheb placed a bar behind’s his friend’s picture. “No one wants to have people think they go to a bar, and that was the joke.”

Saheb printed 10 photos and pasted them on walls around their neighborhood. “Not a lot of people took notice to the poster because there were many posters around,” Saheb said, “but a while ago I was standing around when a man passed by, stopped, and he took a look. He smiled and said ‘This one is good because he likes liquor. I don’t know him but I will vote for him.’ ‘

After a while, Saheb’s friend realized the posters were everywhere and he eventually found out Saheb had been behind the plot. First, he was angry but then he started to laugh and he took a copy to show it to his wife. Displaying a morbid streak, Saheb laughed: “Four years from now if we are still alive we will recall the election days hoax.”

-- Usama Redha in Baghdad