Almost every inch of public space in Baghdad has been filled in the past month by posters of candidates gazing out at a brighter future. Campaign commercials on television have virtually eclipsed regular programming. Mobile phones beep with text messages from obscure provincial coalitions.

Shia Islamists display their clerics, mosques and martyrs. An elderly Sunni sheikh, his voice so weak it is barely audible, derides the Shia-led government's failure to provide basic services. Hazem al-Shaalan, the ultra-secular defence minister known for his blood-curdling threats to crush rebels and traitors, clenches a fist. Ahmed Chalabi, the former opposition leader - who has attracted both credit and blame in Baghdad for cajoling the US into war to unseat Saddam Hussein - proclaims: "We freed the nation, and we will build it."