The city’s name is synonymous with some of the fiercest fighting in the Iraq war. Five years later, the battles have long finished and the ballot rather than the bomb is the buzzword as campaigning begins for a provincial election at the end of the month.

“I want to vote because it is important for our future,” said Mohammed Abdul Wadood, 29, a labourer clearing rubble off the city’s pavements.

Blast walls erected to protect shop-fronts and houses from explosions and gunfire during the darker days are now covered by posters of candidates, each with a slogan promising improvements to voters’ lives.

Election teams go from door to door, encouraging people to vote – a novel concept for many who were either too afraid or mistrustful to take part in the first election in 2005 when security was still dire.

Latif Abas, 58, who owns a pharmacist’s in the centre of the city, plans to cast a vote in three weeks’ time. “We have to be interested in the elections,” he said. “We want change. We want to put the right people in the job.”

Mr Abas, like many in Fallujah, feels that the current provincial council, which governs all of Anbar province from the main city of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, is not representative of the people.

Its members were selected from dominant tribes after most Sunni Arabs, who represent the majority in the province, boycotted the previous vote because of fear, intimidation and a distrust of the new Shia Arabled Government that emerged after the downfall of Saddam Hussein.

At the Fallujah headquarters of the Iraqi Islamic Party, the only Sunni Arab party to take part in the previous provincial and national polls four years ago, officials are hard at work promoting four local candidates.

The Fallujah hopefuls promise an improvement in services such as electricity and sewage, which remain poor. Reconstruction of the city is also a key pledge.

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