WHAT a difference a year makes in Iraqi politics. Eleven months ago, when this country went to the polls, candidates and voters participated in their first democratic experiment in the face of death threats and suicide bombings.

Election day looked more like a military operation than an exercise in people power. Cynics discounted the process as doomed to failure because violence had made normal campaigning impossible. The result was distorted by the boycott of the Sunni Muslim community, a fifth of the population.

As Iraqis prepare to cast their ballots today, there is already a tangible sense that they have reached a milestone, not only in Iraq’s history, but also in the region’s.

Baghdad is still down to five hours a day of electricity. The capital looks drab and dirty. Reconstruction and economic recovery remain distant dreams. Outside the local Yarmouk hospital there is a daily traffic jam as relatives collect the bodies of the latest casualties of violence.

But today, if predictions are correct, more than 70 per cent of Iraq’s 15.5 million eligible voters will cast their ballots, selecting 275 representatives in Parliament from more than 7,000 candidates. That would far exceed the turnout in most Western democracies, including Britain and America.

Sunnis, who now realise they played into Shia hands by boycotting January’s election of a transitional Government, are expected to turn out in force. The insurgents have declared that they will not interfere in the voting. Some have even offered to protect polling stations against attack.

“We made a mistake last time,” one Sunni insurgent said in Baghdad. “Now the only hope for our community is to vote in strength.”

The conversion is stunning. This time last year the only way to report on the election campaign in the northern city of Mosul was by travelling in the relative safety of a US armoured column. Insurgents were launching dozens of attacks a day. To vote was an act of great courage.

The contrast now could not be greater. Yesterday there was a party atmosphere in Baghdad. A ban on motor vehicles, to prevent the threat of car bombs, meant that normally busy thoroughfares were colonised by young men playing football. Elderly couples strolled in the warm winter sunshine. The sounds of gunfire and low-flying helicopters were replaced by birdsong and children’s laughter.

In interviews with at least 30 Iraqis, most were acutely aware of the importance of their country’s first permanent representative government. They all hoped it would signal the end of the violence and permit the withdrawal of foreign forces. The younger voters in particular were amazingly opinionated about the party leaders and manifestos. They were more politically aware than most of their American and British contemporaries, including those in uniform in Iraq helping to provide security for today’s vote.

Despite the killing of one candidate and a few campaign workers, today’s election will set a new standard in the Arab world — and the sight of millions of Iraqis freely exercising their democratic rights will be broadcast live from Libya to Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The vote will be more democratic than this year’s presidential and parliamentary races in Egypt, where the ruling party never fully loosened its grip on power. It will be fairer than the Palestinian parliamentary race, postponed after fears that the Islamic parties would do well. It should reflect more accurately the will of Iraq’s various ethnic and sectarian groups, unlike the confused result in this year’s Lebanese election.

The diversity of opinion in Iraq is extraordinary in a society where only three years ago Iraqis “voted” by 90 per cent to extend Saddam Hussein’s rule. Back then any Iraqi questioned by a foreign journalist would dutifully parrot support for the dictator.

Iraqis today laugh at the memory. The new breed of politicians no longer has a mono-poly on their attention. Over the past few weeks Arab television channels, which usually broadcast non-stop chaos and violence, are now buzzing with sophisticated political advertisements. Ayad Allawi, the secular former Prime Minister, tells voters that only he can resolve the country’s problems. Ahmad Chalabi, the former Pentagon protégé , promises to share Iraq’s oil wealth with those who vote for him.

On the streets of every city the walls are plastered with a bewildering range of posters showing Iraq’s politicians in guises ranging from the pious, to the jolly and the serious.

Two bright blue balloons bearing the “555” banner of the main Shia Muslim religious party floated past the tenth-floor office of The Times yesterday. Moments later my mobile phone received a text message suggesting that the party’s number on the ballot paper echoed the five main tenets of Islam set out in the Koran.

Whether God is backing the party is debatable, but the mere holding of the election is a miracle in itself.

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