Beirut (MER) - Iraqis are due to vote on Jan. 30 in their first election since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. Following is a brief roundup of the key players as the people go to the polls.
Who Is Being Elected?
Voters will choose 275 members of a national assembly, whose key task will be to debate and approve a new constitution. They will also choose members of 18 provincial assemblies and the autonomous Kurdish parliament in the north. The national assembly will pick a new government to succeed the interim administration formed in June by the U.S.-led occupation authority in consultation with the United Nations. The assembly is meant to be dissolved and a new parliament elected according to the new constitution by the end of 2005.
How Does It Work?
All Iraqis over 18 years old on Jan. 1 can vote -- perhaps some 15 million of a population of about 27 million. The election register is based on the ration list, a relic of U.N. sanctions. On Jan. 30, voters must bring two forms of photo identification to their local polling station. After voting, their name is crossed off the register and their thumb marked with indelible ink to prevent them voting again. There is one national ballot, without constituencies. Voters cast one vote for a list of candidates put forward by a party or coalition. There will be around 40,000 voting booths in 6,000 to 9,000 polling stations, including some in about 14 foreign countries where Iraqi expatriates will vote from Jan. 28 to 30. Seats are allocated by proportional representation, so a list that wins 20 percent of the vote will receive 55 seats, attributed to the top 55 names on its list.
Who Is Standing?
In all, 256 groups and individuals registered. But many are either not fielding candidates or joined 33 coalition lists, leaving the likely ballot paper featuring about 100 choices. Most parties reflect sectarian and ethnic divides. Shiite Muslims, the long-oppressed 60 percent majority, are likely to back Shiite parties, some overtly religious, others secular. Kurds, accounting for 10 percent to 15 percent of Iraqis, mostly back one of two big Kurdish parties. Sunni Arabs, about 20 percent of the population, dominated Saddam's regime and earlier administrations and some Sunni parties have called for an election boycott. However, many Sunni groups are now standing in the poll.
Main Coalition Lists
United Iraqi List
--Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Shiite Islamist) - Abdul Aziz al-Hakim
--Islamic Dawa Party in Iraq (Shiite Islamist) - Iraqi Vice President Ibrahim Jaafari
--Islamic Dawa Party Iraq Organization (Shiite Islamist) - Abdul Karim Anizi
--Iraqi National Congress (secular) - Ahmad Chalabi
--Islamic Virtue Party (Shiite Islamist) - Nadim Issa Jabiri
--Turkmen Islamic Union (Turkmen) - Abbas Hassan al-Bayati
--Islamic Action Organization (Shiite Islamist) - Ibrahim al-Matiri
Also includes nine other Shiite and Turkmen parties and prominent Saddam-era dissenter Hussain al-Shahristani
Iraqi List--Iraqi National Accord (secular) - Prime Minister Iyad Allawi
With five other secular parties and one individual
Kurdistan Alliance List
--Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (Kurdish) - Jalal Talabani
--Kurdistan Democratic Party (Kurdish) - Massoud Barzani
With nine other Kurdish parties
Patriotic Rafidain Party--Assyrian Democratic Movement (Christian) - Yonadim Kanna
--Chaldean National Council (Christian)
People's Union--Iraqi Communist Party (secular) - Hamid Majid Moussa
With one additional individual candidate
Main Single Party Lists--Iraqi Islamic Party (Sunni Islamist) - Mohsen Abdul Hamid
--Independent Democratic Movement (secular) - Adnan Pachachi
--Iraqis (secular) - Iraqi President Ghazi al-Yawar
--Iraqi National Gathering (secular) - Hussein al-Jibouri
--Constitutional Monarchy (secular) - Al-Sharif Ali Bin Hussein
--Reconciliation and Liberation Bloc (secular) - Mishaan Jibouri
The Iraqi Leaders Contesting Polls
Iyad Allawi
Appointed interim prime minister a month before Washington formally restored Iraqi sovereignty on June 28, Allawi, 58, has built a reputation as a tough man who brooks little opposition. A former Baathist who opposed Saddam from exile with help from the CIA and British intelligence, he has yet to convince many Iraqis he is no mere tool of his Western allies. But Allawi's public profile has risen and even if his alliance of secular parties does not win, the Shiite politician will be a strong consensus candidate to stay as prime minister.
Massoud Barzani
Leader of one of Iraq's two main Kurdish parties, Massoud Barzani is determined to ensure that a permanent constitution enshrines hard-won autonomy for the mainly Kurdish north. His Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) guerrillas fought alongside U.S. troops in the war that ended Saddam's brutal repression of Kurds, as did those of his rival Jalal Talabani. The two leaders have shelved their differences to pursue a federal, democratic, pluralist Iraq. Their electoral alliance should ensure them a strong voice in Iraq's future.
Ahmad Chalabi
Once a Pentagon darling, Ahmad Chalabi has fallen out with the Americans who had touted him as a possible postwar leader. He has sought political resurrection in Shiite politics. Despite his secular, Westernized outlook he has cultivated top cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and the radical Moqtada al-Sadr. An ambitious deal-maker, Chalabi has aligned his Iraqi National Congress party with the main Shiite religious parties in a list that is widely expected to win the polls.
Abdel Aziz Al-Hakim
The leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Abdel Aziz al-Hakim tops the main Shiite list. He has echoed Sistani's insistence that elections go ahead despite violence by Sunni insurgents bent on derailing them. SCIRI has taken part in U.S.-backed institutions since the war. Earlier it opposed Saddam from Iran, which supported its Badr Brigade militia. Hakim has led SCIRI since a bomb killed his brother Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim in August 2003.
Ibrahim Jaafari
Vice president in Iraq's U.S.-backed interim government, Ibrahim Jaafari has frequently criticized American military action aimed at quelling Sunni and Shiite insurgents. The Shiite Daawa party leader, a physician, has advocated drawing Sadr and other dissidents into the political process. Daawa, once an underground Islamist party persecuted by Saddam, has, like SCIRI, taken part in the U.S.-led political transition while endorsing Sistani's demand for early elections.
Adnan Pachachi
Sunni elder statesman Adnan Pachachi wants the elections delayed for six months, saying intimidation and violence in central Iraq's Sunni heartlands will produce a lopsided result. He fears a low turnout by the 20 percent Sunni minority will further marginalize the once-dominant community, undermine the legitimacy of the poll and fuel the risk of civil war. But Pachachi, foreign minister in the 1960s before Saddam's Baath party came to power and a longtime U.S. ally, still plans to contest the election at the head of his own secular party.
Moqtada Al-Sadr
Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr staged two anti-U.S. revolts in Baghdad and southern cities last year, but his bloodied Mahdi Army militia has observed a truce in recent months. The charismatic preacher has endorsed no party in the poll, but some of his supporters are running as independents. Sadr has built on the prestige of his late father Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, a murdered foe of Saddam, to attract a zealous following among the young, poor and dispossessed.
Hussain Al-Shahristani
A nuclear scientist tortured for defying Saddam, Hussain al-Shahristani is a leading light in the Shiite electoral bloc known as the United Iraqi Alliance, which has Sistani's backing. Shahristani, who helped forge the list late last year, was once tipped for interim prime minister, but Washington preferred Allawi, seen as a steelier and more seasoned politician. A devout Shiite who favors a secular state, Shahristani has come under attack from Allawi's outspoken defense minister, Hazim al-Shaalan, for his alleged relationship with Iran.
Ali Al-Sistani
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has been the leading voice of religious moderation in postwar Iraq, where he wields great influence from near-seclusion in the holy city of Najaf. A traditionalist of the Shiite school, which eschews political power for clerics, Sistani has nevertheless forced Washington to change its transition plans time and again. The white-bearded cleric has consistently demanded early elections, seen by Iraq's 60 percent majority Shiites as the best route to correct their long exclusion from power. He kept clear of politics in Saddam's time, but after the dictator's fall, the Iranian-born cleric moved to center stage.
Jalal Talabani
Jalal Talabani's secular, socialist Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) runs half the Kurdish enclave that broke away from Baghdad's control after the 1991 Gulf war. Despite past feuding with the more tribal KDP, which controls the other half, the two parties are election allies. Talabani began as a lieutenant to Barzani's father, Mullah Mustafa Barzani, the patriarch of Iraqi Kurdish nationalism and founder of the KDP, but broke away to form the PUK in 1975.
© MER (Middle East Reporter) 2005
