Oct 15, 2002 4 min read

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – Rounding a jowl here, furling a giant brow there, sculptor Khalil Khamis chipped out his Election Day tribute: 20-Foot Saddam, the biggest-ever all-Iraqi statue of Iraq’s ruler. Going on display Tuesday, when Iraqis cast a yes or no vote on keeping Saddam Hussein for another seven-year term, super-Saddam stands tall among the state-whipped frenzy of whirling, warbling homage to the day’s sole candidate and sure winner.

“Whenever I am tired, I look up into his face, and his power comes to me,” Khamis said Monday after laboring night and day to finish 20-Foot Saddam along with nine other chalk-and-gilt renderings of Saddam in time for Election Day.

From 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., nearly 12 million Iraqis are expected to go to the polls in a vote that Iraq portrays as a defense of Saddam and homeland, and a rebuke to the United States in the face of threatened attack.

Abroad, members of Iraq’s 2-million-member exile community denounced the vote and plans rallies Tuesday in Stockholm, Sweden, and other European cities.

“The whole practice is a fiasco, orchestrated by a regime that does not believe in the people’s voice,” spokesman Ismail Zayer of the “No to Saddam” campaign said from outside Iraq.

The Iraqi vote “is a forced pledge of loyalty” by Iraqis, he said. “Their real voices, if given the choice, will say no to Saddam loud and clear.”

At home, Saddam’s Baath party has staged voter drives neighborhood-by-neighborhood to ensure the vote is gotten out. The ballot boasts two simple boxes, with “yes” or “no,” to be marked in booths segregated by gender.

All project a stronger showing than in 1995, when 99.96 percent of voters checked “yes” to another seven years in power for Saddam, who has ruled the country for two decades.

The Baath party and the rest of Saddam’s regime control almost everything in Iraq, and little in the campaign was left to chance, or spontaneity.

Pickup trucks mounted with cranes draped electric holiday lights from street poles, ready for Tuesday’s celebration.

Workers hung the last of “Yes, Yes, Yes Saddam” banners that have gone up on every block and virtually every building in central Baghdad.

Driving past them, flicking the car radio up and down the dial elicited a range of voices, bassoon to falsetto, declaiming the same: “Yes, Yes, Yes Saddam.”

An election eve celebration at Baghdad’s People’s Stadium drew thousands, dancing and forming the Iraqi flag on the field. They sang, “Yes, Yes, Yes Saddam.”

At the rally, Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan condemned the United States over reported plans for a post-Saddam military occupation of Iraq – saying it laid bare to the world America’s “crazy and evil administration.”

“The administration exposed itself to show that the issue is not inspectors nor weapons of mass destruction,” Ramadan said. “The issue is an American domination.”

State TV – except for one station controlled by Saddam’s family – showed nonstop tributes to Saddam. Old clips showed Saddam patting schoolchildren. Saddam bestowing medals. Saddam at prayer. Saddam on a white charger.

All that was absent was the candidate.

Saddam himself, ever-mindful of coup and assassination attempts, has not appeared in the flesh before his people since December 2000.

Muzzles of anti-aircraft artillery and heavy machine guns stick out among the election banners of Baghdad, guarding inroads and sites that could be targeted by the United States.

In a courtyard in Baghdad, Khamis worked from memories of Saddam, and didn’t mind.

“I don’t need a model, because the image of the president is in my brain,” he explained.

Saddam ears and Saddam hair lay in broken molds on the ground around him.

Twenty-Foot Saddam was dressed in law robes, commemorating the military man’s time in law school.

Other Saddams – Saddam in the garb of Iraq’s Kurd minority, Saddam as a Bedouin, Saddam with a rifle – stood around him.

Metal rods jutted out of Saddam in a business suit, arms not yet attached.

Iraq already is rich in images of Saddam. Painted likenesses hang from buildings and statues sprout at intersections – Horseback Saddam, Sweater Saddam, Shotgun Saddam, Saddam with the Scales and Rifle of Justice, Soldier Saddam.

Some statues are big. But those are imports.

“We are very proud, because we are the Iraqi people, and this is the first of President Saddam Hussein by Iraqis,” Khamis said, chalk chips on his hands and in his eyebrows. “This is historic.”