Iraq Shiites poised for power

2005-02-13 12:11

Baghdad - Iraq's main Shiite list was expected to sweep to victory when final election results were announced later on Sunday, finally translating the majority community's demographic weight into political power after decades under the Sunni yoke.

A landslide would not be surprising given that Shiites make up at least 60% of Iraq's estimated population of 27 million.

Indeed, some officials and observers predict the United Iraqi Alliance could muster well over half the vote, but for a community that was oppressed for so long, the victory will have been a long time coming.

Shiite clerics made abundant reference in the run-up to the January 30 vote to elections in 1924, when Shiites widely boycotted the polls and ended up excluding themselves from power for the next eight decades.

Instead, Iraq's Shiites worked hard to form a united front ahead of the vote, no matter how transitory it turns out to be in power.

Alliance 'will not last'

With member parties ranging from conservative Islamists and radical clerics to fringe Sunni and Kurd outfits, many observers have said the alliance will not last.

Cracks in the alliance may appear soon after the final results, as the race for the prime minister's post and key ministries goes into the final furlong.

"The Shiites will remain the dominant force but not in its present form," one senior member of the alliance, who spoke on condition of anonymity, admitted earlier this month.

"It may only be a question of months or even weeks," said one Western election observer in Iraq. "It is a matter of personalities and the breadth of issues. It was a strong electoral coalition but not a long-term alliance."

The alliance was formed under the auspices of Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

It includes the two mainstream Shiite religious factions - the Dawa party and the Tehran-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq - as well as the secular Iraqi National Congress of former Pentagon favourite Ahmed Chalabi.

Three names on the list candidates have emerged as most likely contenders for the premiership: Dawa leader Ibrahim Jaafari, Finance Minister and SCIRI member Adel Abdel Mahdi and Hussein Shahrastani, a nuclear scientist and close confidant of Sistani.

Most influential public person

Jaafari is a religious Shiite who commands popular support unmatched by any of his competitors, with an opinion poll published last year ranking the 54-year-old as the third most influential public figure in Iraq, behind Sistani and Shiite radical leader Moqtada Sadr, neither of whom were candidates.

Abdel Mahdi has emerged as the best consensus candidate for the top job.

Once a Baath socialist, Mahdi has transformed into a staunch ultra-liberal who wants to overhaul the state apparatus and lead the country into modernity.

Abdel Mahdi's conservative SCIRI has toned down its Islamist demands in recent months and he reportedly enjoys close ties with some members of the White House's influential National Security Council.

Shahrastani, number seven on the Shiite list, is a strong advocate of healing Iraq's divisions and is seen as someone who could offer an olive branch to Sunni Arab insurgents and calm Shiite and Kurdish cries for revenge against members of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime.

- AFP