By STEVEN LEE MYERS and SAM DAGHER Published: April 26, 2010
BAGHDAD — Seven weeks after Iraqis went to the polls [ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/08/world/middleeast/08iraq.html ], a special elections court disqualified a winning parliamentary candidate, most likely reversing the narrow defeat of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s alliance and possibly allowing him the first chance to form a new coalition government.
The court disqualified the candidate on charges that he was a loyalist of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, and it left open the possibility of barring still more.
Moves by the court, if upheld on appeal, would erase the two-seat victory by a largely secular coalition [ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/27/world/middleeast/27iraq.html ] led by Ayad Allawi, a Shiite who served as an interim prime minister after the American overthrow of Mr. Hussein.
At a minimum, it would further delay the formation of a new government through the months when the Obama administration planned to withdraw its combat troops, leaving a force of only 50,000 by September.
Iraqi officials now grimly predict that there might not be a new government in place by that deadline, putting the Obama administration in the difficult position of deciding whether to press ahead with its plans despite the political uncertainty here.
Mr. Allawi’s bloc won 91 seats in the country’s new 325-seat Parliament, compared with 89 for Mr. Maliki’s State of Law coalition, according to preliminary results announced a month ago that have now been cast in doubt.
The court also disqualified 51 other losing candidates; the votes they received will be discarded, requiring a recalculation of the winners — and losers — across the ballot. Under Iraq’s tortuous and untested election laws, that could cost Mr. Allawi’s bloc a second seat, while awarding seats to Mr. Maliki or other parties, officials said.
The director of a disputed commission charged with purging former Baath loyalists also disclosed on Monday that he had asked the court to bar eight more winning candidates. The court is expected to rule on those candidates, all with Mr. Allawi’s coalition, as soon as Tuesday.
The machinations over the results have also cast doubt on the ultimate fairness of an election that was seen as a test of Iraq’s nascent democracy and the United States’ ability to withdraw. The political impasse has revived sectarian tensions that are never far from the surface and has raised the specter of even more violence.
Mr. Allawi’s supporters, many of them Sunni Muslims, denounced the ruling and other moves since the March 7 election as an effort to undercut the voters’ will. Sunni anger over elections in 2005 fueled the insurgency that engulfed the country.
“It is tantamount to an assassination of the democratic process,” said Haidar al-Mulla, a winning candidate from Mr. Allawi’s alliance, known as Iraqiya.
Mr. Allawi’s coalition appealed to the United Nations and the United States to do more to stop what it called an electoral travesty.
The court’s ruling can be appealed, which would delay final results for at least another month, perhaps longer. Only a week ago, the same election panel ordered a partial recount of votes in the province that includes Baghdad.
That was supposed to have begun already, but the country’s election commission said Monday that the recount would be delayed as its commissioners sought clarification from the same court about how exactly to conduct it.
The convoluted challenges to the results, the dearth of public information and the weakness of Iraq’s state institutions have compounded confusion over the election’s outcome and the path to forming a government.
Many officials reacted with surprise after the court’s decision, relying on information — and misinformation — as word of it spread. The court, as usual, did not publicly release its ruling.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Hajim al-Hassani, a member of Mr. Maliki’s coalition. “It’s going to the federal court. It’s up to these institutions to resolve these questions.”
In disqualifying the candidates, the court ruled in favor of a parliamentary panel with disputed legal standing, the Accountability and Justice Commission. It first moved to bar candidates accused of having Baathist ties [ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/world/middleeast/14iraq.html ] in January, knocking more than 500 off the ballot then in what was widely seen as a partisan and sectarian attack on Sunnis and Mr. Allawi’s coalition.
The commission’s director, Ali Faisal al-Lami, ran as a candidate with the other main Shiite coalition, but he failed to win a seat. Even after the voting was finished, the commission continued to accuse more candidates, even though its mandate from the exiting Parliament was in question.
The winning candidate disqualified Tuesday was Ibrahim al-Mutlaq. He ran on Iraqiya’s slate in Baghdad in the spot once filled by his brother, Saleh [ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/world/middleeast/19sunni.html ], after he was disqualified in January.
Ibrahim al-Mutlaq, who has lived in the United Arab Emirates for the past four years said he had been involved with his brother in agriculture during Mr. Hussein’s rule, leasing land from the government but never joining the Baath Party. He called the accusations that led to his disqualification “trumped-up charges” meant to protect “the gang that rules Iraq at the moment.”
Mr. Lami, who spent nearly a year in American custody [ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/world/middleeast/18iraq.html ] on charges of planning a bombing that killed four Americans and six Iraqis at a district council meeting in Baghdad in 2008, again defended the commission’s campaign against those who once belonged to the Baath Party.
“Their participation in the elections was illegal,” he said, without explaining why the candidates were not disqualified in the first round before the election. “Their votes must be discarded.”
Mr. Hassani, of Mr. Maliki’s bloc, said that the exact number of seats each coalition wins was not significant, given that none won close to a majority.
“Whether Allawi is going to have 90 seats or 85, or we have 89 or 95, is not important,” he said. “Whoever is going to be able to form coalitions will form the government.”
Duraid Adnan, Yasmine Mousa and Zaid Thaker contributed reporting.
As U.S. troops leave the country, one man stands to benefit above all: Moqtada al-Sadr.
They just had to use this photo of him, didn't they ? oh my scary scary religious middle eastern man ..GASP
BY BABAK DEHGHANPISHEH | AUGUST 20, 2010
It would be hard to imagine a more unlikely meeting. Late in July, the tempestuous Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr traveled to Damascus from Iran, where he's been living in exile for the past three years. The trip looked at first to be a routine photo-op for Sadr and Syrian President Bashar Assad. That is, until Sadr met with Ayad Allawi, a top contender for the prime minister post in Iraq and one of the cleric's sworn enemies. Their mutual enmity dates back to a showdown in the holy city of Najaf in the summer of 2004. Sadr's Mahdi Army fighters had taken over the city and were using the Imam Ali shrine, one of the holiest sites for Shiites, as a base of operations. Allawi, who was interim prime minister at the time, gave American and Iraqi troops the green light to take them out, killing dozens of Mahdi militiamen in the process.
So it was no small thing for the two to meet in person. And they didn't just talk; they were laughing and hamming it up as if they were the best of friends. The photos and video footage from that meeting are some of the only public examples of Sadr smiling (the more common profile is a scowling Sadr, wrapped in a white martyr's shroud, pounding a pulpit). Sadr had good reason to be happy: He now holds the fate of his one-time enemy in his hands.
Sadr -- feared by some, reviled by others and revered by a broad swath of Iraq's urban poor -- is now a kingmaker in Iraqi politics. It's a role that Sadr, the scion of a prominent clerical family, has been building toward since 2003. Immediately after the U.S. invasion, thousands of his supporters packed the dusty streets of Baghdad's Saddam City neighborhood (later renamed Sadr City) for Friday prayers week after week. Sadr rallied their ranks around his parliamentary list in the 2005 elections, making a strong showing, and then used his political clout to help push Nouri al-Maliki into the prime minister slot in 2006. But the friendship didn't last: Sadr bitterly split from Maliki when the latter allowed American troops to attack his militia members. Depending on whom you ask, Sadr either sensed he was next to be targeted and fled to Iran or was convinced of that fact by Iranian officials, who urged Sadr to leave for his own safety. Now, as U.S. troops withdraw and negotiations are underway in Baghdad to form a new government, Sadr may be planning his return. If he does, he will no doubt face jubilant crowds once again.
Sadr's political comeback was the result of careful and deliberate planning. More than a year before the elections in March, Sadr and his top aides set up an election strategy committee they dubbed the "machine." The goal was to game the electoral system as best as they could. A team of seven pored over the election law, dissected district maps, and built an extensive database of voters in every province. In the end, Sadr's Free Movement party won 39 seats in parliament, giving his followers a decisive vote within the National Iraqi Alliance, the dominant Shiite bloc of which they are part. And that's exactly why Allawi shuttled to Damascus for the meeting: He needs Sadr if he hopes to become prime minister.
It would be easy to write off Sadr's electoral success as a fluke. But the reality is that the cleric's brand of religious nationalism, coupled with his carefully cultivated image as the defender of the Shiite community, has struck a deep chord with tens of thousands of Iraqis. Moreover, he's got the one thing that his rivals don't: "street cred." Sadr can, rightfully, claim that his movement is one of the few on the Iraqi political scene that's homegrown. Compare this to the Sadrists' top rivals in the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI). For years, they've tried to fight the image that they were brought in on American tanks and are beholden to both Washington and Tehran, even changing their name because the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq sounded too Iranian. They tried appropriating the image of Iraq's most senior cleric, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, to woo more supporters (there are still posters up around Baghdad showing the late ISCI leaders Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer Hakim and Abdul Aziz Hakim beside Sistani). Nothing worked. ISCI got wiped out at the polls in March and also had a pretty dismal showing during provincial elections last year.
The Sadrists, by contrast, aren't going anywhere -- which puts Washington, among others, in a bind. Sadr's supporters are more than just a political party. The cleric is clearly following the Hezbollah model, creating a populist political movement backed by a battle-hardened militia. The language Sadr uses when discussing the U.S. presence in Iraq -- resistance, occupation, martyrdom -- could easily have been taken from a speech by Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah. All this has discouraged U.S. officials from holding talks with Sadr -- something they've never done since 2003. It's not exactly like Sadr has gone out of his way to open up a dialogue, either. In fact, Sadr and many of his top aides have made it clear that the Mahdi Army won't disarm as long as there are American troops on Iraqi soil.
So what does Sadr want? One issue that has come up again and again in the negotiations to form the government is detainees. In a recent interview with Al Jazeera, Sadr estimated that there are as many as 2,000 detainees linked to his movement, most swept up in U.S. operations in 2007 and 2008, whom he would like to see released. The cleric has claimed that he doesn't want to mix the issue of detainees with the negotiations to form the government, but representatives from major political blocs who have held talks with the Sadrists dispute that claim, noting that Sadr has blasted Maliki for holding the prisoners and withheld his support. No doubt whichever candidate Sadr ultimately backs for the premiership will have to make major concessions on the detainees. He may also have to promise to lay off the Mahdi Army.
But the detainees are only a short-term bargaining chip. What Sadr is after is power itself -- and if his past record is any indication, he won't be shy about using it. There are any number of issues he could block or help push through parliament. Sadr has previously butted heads with Kurdish groups about the final status of Kirkuk, an oil-rich city that the Kurds claim as their capital. He is a proponent of putting oil revenues under central government control, a position at odds with the Kurds as well as some rival Shiite groups, such as ISCI. Women's rights groups have already voiced strong concerns that the Sadrists could block their attempts to reform laws that cover property ownership, divorce, and child custody. Some even fear that Mahdi fighters will again target women's rights activists, as they did in Basra in 2007 and 2008.
Sadr's ambitions don't cover Iraq's domestic agenda alone. His high-profile trips to Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere indicate that he wants to be seen as a prominent regional player. He would like to promote his Mahdi Army as a member of the so-called "axis of resistance" made up by Hezbollah and Hamas, both of which have made their names by confronting the United States and Israel.
For now, Sadr is undoubtedly pleased by his opportunity to have a key vote in who becomes the next prime minister. And it's hard to miss the irony from a man who has built his image on being among the people. He's not casting that vote from Baghdad, where he could rally millions of supporters, but from a comfortable perch hundreds of miles away in neighboring Iran.
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
