Leaning on his crutch, the seventy-year-old Issam Shukr was the first to vote at his polling station in Baghdad, with the polls opening in the early elections taking place today, Sunday.

But many young people did not rush to participate, despairing of the possibility of changing the current situation amid the depth of the crises facing Iraq.

The streets of the capital were devoid of the usual crowding, and a large number of security forces were deployed, especially at the entrances to the polling stations, in a country where security concerns are still present, in addition to the fear of demonstrations condemning the electoral process.

F-16 warplanes flew over the capital.

A citizen named Issam says, "I am proud that I am the first to vote in every election" that took place after 2003, that is, after the US invasion and the overthrow of the previous regime, in order to "improve the country's conditions and form a new parliament."

At the polling station at Al-Amal School in central Baghdad, in the early morning, a large number of elderly people flocked.

In the vicinity of the center, electoral posters torn and lying on the ground.

The early elections are one of the few concessions made by the authority to absorb popular anger after protests that erupted at the end of 2019 against corruption, the decline in public services and economic decline.

An Iraqi seated cast his vote in one of the Najaf centers in southern Iraq (Reuters)

 A change

The protests subsided due to a bloody repression that killed about 600 people and injured more than 30,000, but the living and economic conditions have not improved, while two out of every five Iraqi youth suffer from unemployment.

In Erbil (the center of the Kurdistan region of Iraq), Karzan Abdul Khaliq (39 years old), a businessman, expressed his hope that the elections would bring about change in the country.

He said: What concerns us is the improvement of the political and economic situation.

In the city of Mosul (north), which was a stronghold of the Islamic State before it was expelled in 2017, Jassem Sultan, 54, on his way to participate in the elections, said that he trusted the electoral process to "reconstruct and stabilize our country."

"It is necessary for all of us to participate in choosing the fittest," he added, even though his city, four years after the end of the war, is still suffering from destruction and deteriorating infrastructure.

He helps his mother to participate in voting at a polling station (Reuters)

loss of confidence

A 30-year-old Christian teacher from central Baghdad chose not to vote.

"Why do we vote? We don't trust any of the candidates, Christians or others...We are not waiting for any change. They have been running the country for 18 years, and we haven't seen any improvement," said the young woman, who preferred not to give her name.

Until midday, there was little turnout in Baghdad.

A journalist from one of the polling stations said that only dozens have flocked to the center since it opened at 7:00 am (4:00 GMT).

Meanwhile, the electronic voting process encountered some technical problems across the country.

From Nasiriyah (in the south), which is the center of gravity of the demonstrations, the 54-year-old agricultural engineer, Iman Al-Amin, described the elections as "not democratic" but rather a hoax.

"We live in a country controlled by an unarmed weapon that kills those who compete with it or disagree with it," she added in despair.