
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, October 22, 1995                   TAG: 9510210025
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: G-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

REFERENDUM

DO YOU want Saddam Hussein to continue as Iraq's leader? That's the question put last week to Iraqis in their country's first national referendum.

The not-very-surprising outcome: a thumping endorsement - 99.996 percent of the vote - for Maximum Leader. That's the kind of majority seldom seen since the Soviet Union went out of business.

The result raises a few questions:

Where did the .0004-percent "no" vote come from?

Why bother to count report "no" ballots at all? (The Soviets did that, too; nobody ever got quite 100 percent, as if this somehow validated tyranny.)

What's the point of holding such an "election"?

The referendum in Iraq has at least one virtue. It makes the legislative and local elections coming up in Virginia, for all the system's flaws and shortcomings, look mighty good in comparison.

by CNB