“With the [Sunni] men, we committed a different blunder. We printed a photo of a weeping woman with a black headscarf. But she was Shiite, and Sunnis wear white headscarves,” the 27-year-old says.
Would-be members of parliament are also battling with new rules from the election commission — they can no longer simply paste their campaign posters onto walls, and must instead use pins to affix them, or use more expensive canvas tarpaulin.
“One canvas poster measuring 2.5m by 6m costs around 225 dollars,” says Amer Hussein, the owner of the Dar al-Azdika printing press. “It’s expensive, but even the small candidates are asking for it.”
Sitting in Hussein’s waiting room is Laith Reza of the Movement for the Future of the Self-Employed, a small, largely unknown party fielding 64 candidates in Baghdad.
“The campaign is costing us 50 million dinars [US$43,000 dollars], and hopefully we will have one member elected,” he says.
Concerns aside, business remains brisk for the capital’s printers, with 39-year-old Hussein even turning people away.
“I have stopped taking orders. I cannot deliver on them before the elections,” he says.
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