People passing by al-Tayaran yard in downtown Baghdad cannot understand the conflicting meaning of two big election posters for the same candidate. One is placed on the right of the yard and the other on the left. They both carry the same picture of Baqer al-Zubaid, a National Coalition candidate. On the first poster, the slogan reads: “Lets start afresh”, while the second suggests: “Let’s continue what we started.” The same candidate and two contradictory messages.

Such posters began appearing days before the official launch of Iraq’s biggest ever parliamentary elections. 20 million Iraqis have the right to vote for over six thousand candidates competing for 325 seats. The candidates have been very busy promoting themselves across the country. No house, government building, public yard or even wall was spared from the posters and their slogans. Every possible space was used, congesting the city’s streets with posters.

“Some days ago, some labourers stuck-up the posters of al-Zubaidi all over the city,” said a taxi driver, looking at the different posters. “After a while, new labourers came by in small cars and started working. When they finished, we saw that they had changed the slogans. It’s embarrassing that they couldn’t have just put new posters up.”

Other politicians have blundered with their posters, too.

“I don’t read or write,” says Hajj Qasem, a local resident, complaining about posters of Mahmoud al-Mashhadani the former house speaker.

“When I saw the poster, I thought that Mashhadani was shouting at women who appeared crying in the poster. Then, people told me what the writing said: ‘I will not forgive those who brought you injustice’. Don’t they [politicians] realise that a third of their voters cannot read or write?” He thinks the posters’ visuals need to be much clearer.

Qasem’s complaint was about a 5-meter poster of al-Mashhadani pointing his finger at two women in black crying for their loved ones, which has hung on many walls in many streets since campaigns started.

Politicians may have got their uses of images wrong, they have been very careful with the words they use and subtly manipulating them. The Shiite entities, split in this election after working together in 2005, are particular exponents of this strategy.

While al-Maliki used the slogan of “the State of Law”, the Shiite National Alliance used similar words with similar ideas behind them: “A Country for its Citizens”. Ibrahim al-Jafari, the former Prime Minister used the only very subtly different slogan, “A country for its people”.

Al-Jafar started his campaign using “Honoured are the Faithful” slogan. This was promoted everywhere and used in posters where Jafari appeared holding his hand up thanking his supporters. Later, in response to al-Maliki’s media campaign against the constitutionally illefal Baath party, al-Jafari adopted a new slogan: “The Baath Party Shall not Return.”

Another former Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi filled as many spaces as possible with pictures, posters and other propaganda. Allawi used a green star in his advertising, letting the country know that if he is elected, he will return the three stars, banned after the fall of the Baath party, to the Iraqi flag.

Nobody can accurately predict the election’s result or who from among the many pictures printed on posters pasted across the country, will soon take up seats in parliament or the presidential palaces in Baghdad. Iraqis will have to wait for some months until a new government is formed to know the results of this marathon. It is then that the Iraqi people will come to know if they are going to continue in the same road or they are going to have a new start.