Pretenders aspire to Iraq’s political throne

By Sami Moubayed

DAMASCUS – Results from Iraq’s tight general election race are becoming clearer, with 95% of votes from the March 7 poll now counted. The latest official figures at the weekend put ex-prime minister Iyad Allawi’s Iraqi National Bloc slightly ahead of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s State of Law coalition.

News that Allawi was leading by 11,000 votes prompted Maliki to call for a recount, with President Jalal Talabani adding his support. On Sunday, the electoral commission rejected their demands, saying there was no justification at this stage and that final results would be announced on March 26.

With seats distributed on a provincial basis, Allawi’s slender edge in the popular vote is less significant than Maliki’s lead in seven ofIraq’s 18 provinces, especially Baghdad, which contributes 70 of the 325 seats in parliament.

Allawi is leading in five provinces, including Mosul, which has 32seats. The State of Law expects to win 92 seats in parliament, while Allawi’s bloc claims it will take 94-96 seats and Maliki’s list no more than 89-91.

Either way, neither party will achieve an absolute majority, forcing the two to reach a compromise and share power. Currently, both Maliki and Allawi refuse to bend, each claiming to have been given a popular mandate to rule by the Iraqi people.

If neither Maliki nor Allawi makes it to the premiership, Iraqis will need to search for a prime minister who is acceptable to both parties. Two names that originally surfaced were Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Adel Abdul Mehdi, both members of the Iran-backed IraqiNational Alliance (INA), which is currently placed third in the poll and is likely to win 68 seats.

Jaafari was immediately written off by Sunnis, since he failed to bring security to Iraq during his 2005-2006 tenure as prime minister. He was unable to control civil strife after terrorists struck at a holy Shi’ite shrine in February 2006, three months before he was replaced by Maliki.

Abdul Mehdi, although acceptable to Iran, is also an unconvincing candidate due, mainly due to objections to him from within the INA. Mehdi’s greatest opponents are his own allies, men like Jaafari who have their own eyes on the premiership, or Shi’ite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, who has always seen Mehdi as an Iranian stooge.

One compromise candidate is Jaafar al-Sadr, a member of the State of Law Coalition who has excellent relations with both his cousin, Muqtada al-Sadr, and the prime minister. Muqtada has made it clear that he will not support Maliki gaining a second term, saying: “During his years in power, Maliki worked for his own personal benefit, not for the people of Iraq.”

Even though the two men ran for competing coalitions, Muqtada would support his cousin Jaafar, who is considered a novelty on the Iraqi political scene, being the son of Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr – a martyred cleric who is regarded by all Shi’ites as a revered leader for having been killed by Saddam Hussein in 1980. Born in Najaf in 1970, Jaafar is also the nephew of the famous Lebanese/Iranian imam, Moussa al-Sadr, who disappeared while on a visit to Libya in 1978. (See Imam’s ghost stalks Arab summit, Asia Times Online, March 10)

Unlike Maliki or Allawi, Jaafar hails from a prominent religious family, bringing him the automatic support of religious Shi’ites of all ages. The fact that he is young – only 40 years old – makes him attractive to young Iraqis, especially since he is not a fundamentalist Shi’ite dressed in a Western suit rather than a traditional Islamic turban and cloak.

The fact that he is from a religious family, however, is a double-edged sword. While it earns him the automatic support of Iran, it also means he could be vetoed by Allawi’s secular team and Iraqi Sunnis, who do not wish to see another religiously driven politician in power, no matter how moderate.

The other name suddenly being floated in Iraqi circles as apremiership candidate is Jawad Boulani, the 50-year-old minister of the interior. Boulani headed his own Sunni-Shi’ite coalition for months but nobody took him seriously as he was running against heavyweights like Allawi and Maliki. Neither the seculars nor the Shi’ites supported him, and nor did the Sunnis. There are indicators, however, that the INA would be willing to back him today, since it is certain that it cannot bring any of its own candidates to the premiership.

Muqtada al-Sadr, who has insisted that he will support neither Maliki nor Allawi for the premiership, has also made it clear that if Jaafar does not get the post, then Boulani would be an acceptable alternative. Muqtada’s feud with Allawi goes back to the latter’s tenure as prime minister in the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War, when Allawi waged a bloody war against the Sadrists.

Boulani is an “insider” having lived all his life in Iraq, contrary to Allawi, Maliki, and Jaafari, who spent the better part of their careers in exile, either in London, Damascus, or Tehran. He has no Sunni-Shi’ite complex, and has repeatedly said that his goal would be to maintain Iraq’s Arab identity, along with keep excellent relations with all neighbors, including Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.

His greatest setback is his track record at the Ministry of Interior, a post he has held since 2006, since he has failed to bring security to Iraq, especially in light of the devastating bombings in August, October, and December 2009. Currently, his owncoalition supports him and so do certain Sunnis on his list, along with certain players within the INA.

In the uncertainty of the long, divisive talks to agree a coalition that lie ahead, these names may never make it past the drawing board. After all, both Jaafar al-Sadr and Jawad Boulani lack regional and international support while Allawi is backed by Saudi Arabia and Syria, and Maliki has the strong backing of heavyweights in Tehran.

Surprises, nevertheless, do happen. Who would have imagined Maliki coming to power back in 2006, after all, given that he was a political nobody in the Iraqi underground during the long years of Saddam Hussein? His name only surfaced when it became inevitable that neither Adel Abdul Mehdi could come to office, nor Ibrahim al-Jaafari keep his post as prime minister. Four years later, with Jaafar al-Sadr or Jawad Boulani, a similar scenario might be repeated.

Sami Moubayed is editor-in-chief of Forward Magazine in Syria.