Iraq’s Shia parties have built a powerful political alliance uniting moderates with extremists and seem likely to dominate next month’s general election. The coalition, formed in weeks of private negotiations, will put forward a joint list of candidates.
The process has been overseen by Iraq’s most revered Shia cleric, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has designated aides to unite the diverse Shia parties and to vet the many independent candidates standing with them.
Although he seeks no political role for himself, the influence of the Iranian-born ayatollah will ensure that the government has a deeply religious character and that Islam is a central tenet of the constitution that must be written next year.
Shia politicians are highly organised and intent on holding the elections on time, despite the violence that still grips Iraq and the pressure for a delay from their Sunni and Kurdish political rivals. If they succeed, it will be the first time for centuries that the Shia have run the country, achieving what many have come to regard as their birthright.
”We are pushing the government and the political parties very hard so that we can have elections on time,” said Jawad al-Maliki, a cultural historian who spent 25 years living in exile and is a senior figure in the large Islamic Dawa Party.
”We feel very strongly that this crisis — the coalition forces, the corruption — is all happening because there are no elections in Iraq.”
A small committee dominated by al-Sistani’s aides is overseeing the joint list of candidates. On January 30, voters are due to elect 275 members of a national assembly, which will then choose a prime minister and Cabinet. The assembly’s prime task will be to write a constitution, to be ratified by a second general election at the end of the year.
The list is topped by the leaders of Islamic Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution, Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. The coalition also includes Ahmad Chalabi, the secular Shia exile who was once a Pentagon favourite to rule post-war Iraq, and representatives of Moqtada al-Sadr, the hardline Shia cleric who has led a series of uprisings against the United States occupation.
It is the first sign of rapprochement between the exiles and the opponents of Saddam Hussein who stayed in Iraq.
Others involved include the Fadhila Party, a moderate Islamist group opposed to the occupation.
”We want to take the Americans out of our country through negotiations, not by fighting,” said its political leader, Nadeem al-Jabbery, a professor of politics at Baghdad University.
”If we don’t have elections or an elected government, then the Americans will stay and our problems will continue.” — Â