Some 25,000 people attended his funeral, countless books have been written about him, a bridge was named in his honour and now the spectre of Austrian far-right leader Joerg Haider is dominating a regional election in Austria.

“A campaign with the tragically deceased Haider”; “A dead man is spearheading us”; “And above all, the spectre of Joerg Haider” read newspaper headlines.

(Photo: Joerg Haider, May 10, 2005 /Miro Kuzmanovic)

Both of Austria’s far-right parties are staking their claim to Haider’s legacy in an election in the Alpine Province of Carinthia where he was governor for more than a decade.

“Carinthia is going HIS way,” proclaim the posters of Haider’s former Freedom Party. Freedom says Haider achieved his greatest successes when heading the party.

“We will look after your Carinthia,” echo the posters of Alliance for Austria’s Future, the splinter party that Haider set up in 2005 after internal disputes within Freedom.

Both parties, which mopped up a third of the vote between them in Austria’s recent parliamentary election, recognise the mileage still to be had out of Haider’s success.

The populist leader, who led the right into a coalition government from 2000-2006, was one of Austria’s rare internationally recognised public figures.

Austria went into mourning when Haider died four months ago in a high-speed car crash, and leaders of all political colours turned up for his funeral.

(Photo:A photo of Joerg Haider stands in the St. Stephens Cathedral during a memorial service in Vienna, Oct 15, 2008/Leonhard Foeger)

“People have the impression that, through Haider, they became a force to be reckoned with in the world,” Klaus Ottomeyer, professor of psychology at the university of Klagenfurt, told Reuters.

Ottomeyer, who will publish a book in March about the making of the Haider myth, said the Carinthians have glorified their former governor as benevolent father figure, Robin Hood or even a patron saint.

This may baffle outsiders, who are mostly familiar with Haider’s blunt anti-immigrant rhetoric and verbal gaffes. His notoriety peaked in the 1990s when he cited “the proper labour policies” of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich and referred to concentration camps as “penal camps” in a parliamentary debate.

But for all the far-right’s bickering over the claim to Haider’s legacy, it may be time to move on and find a new hero.

Political researcher Guenther Ogris said the Haider cult was beginning to fade, and Carinthians were turning their focus elsewhere.

“At the end of the day, the economic crisis is now the main thing on people’s minds — that is emotionally more important than the dead governor.”

By Mohammed Abbas                                      

Many developing countries are mired in dated bureaucratic practice and tangled in red tape, but of all of them, Iraq can perhaps least afford to see its crucial post-war development suffocated under mounds of paperwork.
What hangs in the balance is nothing less than whether oil-rich Iraq can emerge from years of war as a prosperous, democratic and secure state — or whether it sinks back into the bloodshed that almost tore it apart.
A love of official stamps, seals and documents in triplicate is by no means only an Iraqi phenomenon. Receiving shipments at Cairo airport, for example, involves one queue to buy a ticket, another to receive it and a third to get it laminated.

But if Iraq is to rebuild its crumbling infrastructure, develop its oil fields and find jobs for legions of restless unemployed — who have easy access to guns — it must make doing business and governing as smooth as possible.
Would-be foreign investors are likely to steer clear if Iraqis themselves find the country’s bureaucracy a nightmare.
Born in Iraq, I was technically eligible to vote in recent provincial elections, but a trip to a government office to apply for a required residency card was a shocking reminder of the mountain of bureaucracy Iraqis must climb.
Hundreds of people shuffled from room to room down long, dim corridors with unmarked doors, clutching sheaves of faded paperwork. A crowd would clamour at a door whenever an official turned up, but otherwise many sat on the floor despondent.
Some looked like they had been there for days.

In one office, two officials let people in one at a time. Noise and paper-waving from the crowd outside erupted each time the door opened.
“Fake. Fake. This one’s okay, take that to the district office and apply there,” said one official, lazily flicking forged identification cards back at a woman before advising her to go and queue at yet another government building.
Far from instilling order, the bureaucracy has fostered an industry in forged documents and fixers versed in byzantine official process, who can apply on your behalf for a hefty fee. Some of that money probably goes to officials. Iraq came second to last out of 180 countries in corruption watchdog Transparency International’s 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index.
Meanwhile, roads remain unpaved, sewage disposal is abysmal and millions have no access to decent housing and healthcare, partly because bureaucracy has made it hard to execute Iraq’s budget.
For journalists, the insistence on long-winded procedure is maddening.
Recent Reuters requests to meet senior Iraqi officials were rejected because the envelope had not been stamped correctly, or because it did not have a randomly generated reference number.
Many officials insist on lengthy honorifics and encourage obsequious preambles to questions, which eats away at press conference time and takes up newspaper space.
The leads of many Gulf newspaper articles, for example, consist of little but long-winded honorifics.
“Noble Leader, Master of the Seven Sand Dunes, who Blesses us with his Beneficience, Sheikh xxxx of xxxx bin xxxx abdul xxx met …” That’s only a mild exaggeration.
Democracy has been touted as a way for Iraqis to reconcile after years of war, and last month they voted in local polls. Incumbents fared badly, and the result was seen as a vote against years of perceived corruption and incompetence.
The pressure is now on Iraq’s new crop of officials to cut the red tape and show democracy works.

 As soon as my plane landed in Baghdad airport earlier this month, I was struck by how much appeared to have changed since I left in March after more than three years’ reporting in Iraq.

 Flights were landing from across the Middle East — Beirut, Amman, Damascus and Dubai — bringing many Iraqis back home after the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday.

 The dark, third world airport, packed with Iraqis still fleeing violence when I left seven months earlier, was cleaner, better lit and more efficient. For the first time, guards were using X-ray machines to check incoming bags.

 Baghdad itself had also changed.

 For a city that used to shut down at 5 p.m., it seemed to be full of life once more. I have never seen it looking more beautiful.

 Iraqis were gradually but cautiously returning to their normal lives, spending time at parks and restaurants and going out at night. They seemed less worried about Sunni-Shi’ite conflict.

 The mood amongst the Iraqi staff in the Reuters news bureau was different too. Each one has been touched by the violence that swept the country over the past five years and most had moved their families abroad. Many had to stay in shared rooms in the bureau because it was too dangerous to travel to and from work each day.

 Now, these rooms are only occupied when employees visit from outside Baghdad.

 You can sense hope in the air.

 Some people attribute the drop in violence to the anti-al Qaeda Awakening – the Sunni forces that now control the once restive Sunni Arab areas. Others link it to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s defeat of the Shi’ite Mehdi Army militia, loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

 Many Iraqis say all they wanted from a “new democratic Iraq” was security. But for years after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, even some of his opponents have yearned for the stability they felt under his rule.

 Could their hopes finally be realised?

 Conversations with senior Iraqi officials in the past few days suggest the optimism may be premature.

 Shi’ite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish politicians spoke of “bad news” ahead. They talked of deep political divisions, and assassinations ahead of the provincial elections expected in January.

 A senior Sunni Arab official, wishing me a happy Eid last week, said: “I wish I could mean this. Nothing has really changed since you have last visited.”

 A Shi’ite official pleaded: “Please be careful, we are expecting lots of problems. Don’t be fooled by the current security situation.”

Iraq’s leaders have overcome many hurdles in their struggle to rebuild their country after the ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003.  But agreeing on the fate of the “ethnic tinderbox” of oil-producing Kirkuk is a particularly testing one.

Why has Kirkuk proven to be such an obstacle? For many, settling its fate seems to be an easy task.

The dispute largely revolves around Kurdish demands to incorporate the city into their autonomous northern Iraq region.  Arabs and Turkmens want the city to remain under the control of the Iraqi government as it has always been.

For an outsider the dispute might seem to be an administrative question of who will manage the city but Kirkuk’s fate has taken on national and regional dimensions since U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam. It has fuelled the ethnic conflict between Arabs
and Kurds and drawn in regional powers, especially neighbouring Turkey.

Kurds look at the city inhabited by Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens as their historic capital, while Arabs and Turkmen argue it equally belongs to them.

While Sunnis and Shi’ite Arabs are locked in a power struggle across the country, they are united in rejecting ceding the city to the Kurdish autonomous region.

But Kirkuk is more than a piece of real estate inheritance. The city sits on a sea of “black gold” — Iraq’s biggest oil field, which has become more lucrative with crude prices above $100 a barrel.

From a regional perspective, Ankara opposes Kurdish control of Kirkuk not only out of concern for the rights of fellow Turkmens in Iraq but also because it will bolster its own Kurdish minority’s demands for autonomy.

Watching an independent Kurdistan gradually taking shape across its border, Ankara fears that Kirkuk’s oil could strengthen the autonomous region in the face of a weak central government in Baghdad, and realise Kurdish aspirations for a region-wide Kurdish state, possibly encompassing southern Turkey and parts of Iran and Syria.

After years of trying and failing, Iraqi leaders are trying to reassure friends and foes that they are close to a deal on the future of Kirkuk. But even if parliament adopts a compromise hammered out behind closed doors, it is difficult to see how it will be implemented.