BAGHDAD, September 30, 2004 - With 100 days to go before elections are scheduled to be held to decide Iraq's future, no posters adorn the capital's streets and no names are being bandied about. There have been no debates scheduled, no candidate forums, no voter education guides.

Instead, Iraqi and American officials are raising serious doubts as to whether legitimate elections are possible.

Much is at stake in these elections, which will anoint a 275-seat parliament with the authority to pen a new Iraqi Constitution. But so far there has been little of the buzz and excitement that confer legitimacy upon an election. Instead, ordinary Iraqis and officials fear that violence could mar the election by keeping voters away, or that the seven parties of mostly exiles to which the occupation authority handed de facto control of the country following the toppling of Saddam Hussein last year will consolidate their hold through the elections.

"The parties have been more worried about dividing the power among themselves than any outreach to the broader public," a senior American diplomat said on condition of anonymity. "They haven't felt much of a need to reach out to the public."

The roots of Iraq's political troubles stretch back far beyond last year's invasion. Saddam's security apparatus cracked down mercilessly on any dissent or attempt to organize political alternatives to his Baath Party, even lashing out against dissidents abroad with assassination attempts and pressure on governments hosting exiled groups.

Iraqi politics, both inside and outside the country, became a dark and secretive enterprise rather than a forum for solving common problems. The Iraqi political class - with a few notable exceptions - remains mired in that worldview. That has meant that most Iraqis are out of touch with the government and the political process meant to deliver democracy to them.

But among Iraqis there is also a sense that the government of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi may be out of touch with his own people, especially after his recent trip to Washington where he thanked the American people for what many Iraqis, even those who initially welcomed the invasion, view as the botched occupation of their country.

"Allawi should have politely criticized the Americans for the occupation," said Mohammed Abdul-Qader, 23, a technology student at Mustansiriya University. "That would have made him more popular with the people, because the Iraqi people would never thank the American people for this occupation."

His handshake and sideline chat with the Israeli foreign minister at the United Nations General Assembly last week, widely reported in print and broadcast by media here, further reinforced the image of Allawi as politically out of touch.

"Unlike other Arab states, Iraq is not forced to have relations with Israel," said Nadeem al-Jaberi, a political science professor and member of the Iraqi interim National Assembly. "There is no security or ideological necessity to have such relations. It would have been better for the prime minister to avoid this subject."

Meanwhile, huge swaths of the Iraqi population remain not just alienated from the political process, but violently opposed to it. Shiites in the southern Iraqi cities of Basra, Nasiriyah, Kut and the Baghdad slum of Sadr City appear to have gathered around firebrand preacher Moqtada al-Sadr.

The country's Sunni Arabs, dislodged from the elite status they have enjoyed since the Ottoman Empire, seethe with rage and move further toward political and religious extremism.

"They realize they've been dealt out," said Sharif Ali bin Hussein, heir to the deposed Iraqi throne and the leader of a monarchist party. "Many sections of the Iraqi people have been dealt out of the process."

Attempts to draw a hard-line opposition to the status quo into the electoral process have proven futile. "At the moment the Sunnis are very negative. They are not positively in favor of the political process at all," said Saad Qindeel, a leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, one of the largest Shiite parties.

Doubts about whether the elections will be fair have been heightened by the conduct of the authorities who oversaw the creation of the interim National Assembly. Many of the nearly 1,000 participants have said that the selection process was rigged to favor pro-government parties.

Iraqis worry that a similar dynamic is taking shape with the creation of a large list of candidates created by the seven ruling parties. They fear that parties are trying to abuse the electoral process to ensure their political staying power.

"I think we're being set up to have fraud on a large scale," said Hussein. "I think the government will be allowed to cheat."

Officials say intense discussions have been taking place over whether the United Nations officials busy at work in the third floor of the Baghdad Convention Center should act as election monitors - as the interim government prefers - or run the election, as those opposed to the status quo demand.

Both Americans and Iraqis worry voter turnout will be low and that elections will be seen as illegitimate. The senior American diplomat here said the U.S. would be happy with a voter turnout of at least 60 percent.

Ordinary Iraqi voters question whether the country's 150,000 foreign soldiers and 150,000 domestic security forces, who have been unable to stem waves of car bombings, rocket attacks, kidnappings and highway robbery throughout the country, will be able to protect hundreds of polling sites.

If turnout is low and election results are flawed because of violence, both the U.S. and the interim Iraqi government should be prepared to shoulder the blame, said Naseer Kamel Chaderji, a member of Iraq's National Assembly and a former member of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council. "If voters don't show up to the polls it shows our failure as leaders in providing them with a safe and secure place to cast their vote," he said.

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