Iraq poll: who will dominate the National Assembly?
More 225 political entities are contesting tomorrow's ballot, but only a handful of alliances are expected to dominate the Assembly, most of them formed along sectarian and ethnic lines.
Baghdad (AsiaNews/Agencies) Iraqis go to the polls tomorrow to elect their first National Assembly with a full mandate since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. More than 225 political entities and 21 coalitions have registered to contest the elections, each identifiable by a three-digit number. In the January election, 111 entities contested. Despite the high number, only a handful of alliances are expected to dominate the Assembly, grouped mainly on the basis of ethnic and sectarian criteria.
The strongest force in the outgoing transition Assembly has been the United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of Shiite Islamist parties including Abdel Aziz Hakim's Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution (SCIRI) and Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari's Dawa Party. With 140 out of 275 seats, the Alliance dominates the current Assembly, even if many observers say it could collapse in the face of new competition. In the last election, the Alliance had the spiritual blessing of the most respected Iraqi Shiite religious leader, the Grand Ayatolah Ali Al-Sistani, who has not backed any particular candidate this time. After his return from exile in Tehran in 2003, Al-Hakim has spearheaded a policy based on principles of Islam; his critics accuse him of being at Iran's service. The same charges are leveled at Jaafari, who as party leader promoted a series of Islam-inspired reforms and of modernization of religious institutions. According to many of his opponents, the man is corrupt, too close to Iranian interests and intent on dragging the country into the grip of a conservative Islam.
The second largest group, the Kurdish Alliance, consists mostly of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Long-time rivals throughout the nineties, in 2002 they put aside their differences to dedicate themselves to the political future of the country and even more to that of their factions. Massud Barzani of the KDP is president of the Kurdish autonomous region while Jalal Talabani of the PUK has taken the presidency of the country.
Talabani was a bitter enemy of Saddam's regime and he devoted most of life to the cause of the Kurds against violent Baath repression. The alliance, which holds 76 assembly seats at present, recently lost the Kurdish Islamic Union which will now run on its own.
A new entry on the political scene is the is the National Concord Front, a grouping of three Sunni parties hoping to take advantage of the new-found interest by the Sunni community dominant under Saddam in the political process. The Iraqi Islamic Party of Tareq al-Hashimi, the Conference of the People of Iraq (CPI) of Adnan al-Dulaimi and the Iraqi National Dialogue (IND) of Khalaf al-Alyani should be able to increase the present Sunni share of the assembly of 20 seats.
These elections will also see an attempted comeback on the political scene by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite, who suffered a heavy defeat in January. The Iraqi National List of Allawi, firmly secular, includes representatives of the Left, the Sunni statesman Adnan Pachachi and another Sunni, the former president Ghazi Yawar. Some observers say the 60-year-old former premier could be a candidate for the prime minister's seat if he manages to get a good electoral result by poaching votes from the religious Shiite lists and by forging a political alliance with Kurd parties. "We are ready to ally ourselves with everyone except with religious parties," he said recently in an interview. The political line of Iyad Allawi in this electoral campaign was clear: the Iraqi National List, under his leadership, is well able to protect the country from civil war and from the ethnic divisions which run through it.
And then there is Ahmed Chalabi and his new National Conference. In the past, it used to be allied with religious Shiites and now it consists of a few small factions, including monarchists and the Iraqi National Congress along with the ministers of education and justice. Once tipped by the Pentagon to the man to lead the new Iraq, Chalabi fell out of favour with the United States because of his ties with Iran. However, there are signs that Washington is becoming interested in him again. Like Allawi, Chalabi, who is currently deputy prime minister, has focused his campaign on what he sees as the current transition government's failures, promising to tackle the problems tormenting the country.
.png)
