BAGHDAD, 26 January 2005 — A Shiite-led coalition is set to dominate Iraq’s election next week, but it may not sweep the polls as widely predicted, or provide the next prime minister. The United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition formed under the guidance of Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, is widely viewed as the strongest contender in the Jan. 30 poll, Iraq’s first multiparty election in nearly 50 years. Shiites form about 60 percent of Iraq’s population and Sistani has issued a fatwa, or religious edict, compelling the faithful to vote — a move likely to boost support for the alliance, even though he has not formally endorsed it. Some have even suggested that the coalition, which has 228 candidates on its slate, could achieve a majority in the 275-seat National Assembly to be elected on Sunday.
But Western diplomatic sources believe the coalition will fall well short of that mark, picking up around 40 percent of the vote — still enough to make it the single biggest bloc. That view coincides with the result of an Internet poll of potential Iraqi voters. “Everyone’s got it in their heads that the Sistani list is just going to run away with the election, but the maths doesn’t back that up,” said a London-based diplomat who asked not to be named. “Sistani is very popular, it’s true, but not every Shiite looks to him for guidance.” He and sources in Baghdad point to Iraq’s long secular tradition and say that while the United Iraqi Alliance may not be fielding many clerics as candidates or stressing religious themes, voters are aware it is dominated by religious parties
Even if most Iraqi Shiites revere Sistani, they may not all vote for United Iraqi Alliance. Other Shiite and Sunni politicians have launched a campaign to discredit the coalition, casting it as an Iranian-backed group intent on turning Iraq into a Shiite theocracy, a description strongly rejected by alliance leaders. While the attacks appear to be short on substance and long on politicking, they may have an impact on how nationalist Iraqis, historically at odds with Iran, choose to vote.
The United Iraqi Alliance also has many strong Sunni Arab, Kurdish and broad-based secular coalitions to contend with among a bewildering array of 111 parties and coalitions on the ballot. Depending on the degree of Sunni Arab participation, likely to be curtailed by the threats of violence shadowing the poll, Western diplomats believe the two biggest Kurdish parties, unified on one list, are likely to come second behind the United Iraqi Alliance and will garner around 20 percent of the vote. Many question marks surround third place, especially as voter turnout is very hard to predict, but some polls indicate that interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s secular list will do well. Western diplomats say the Shiite Allawi is well-placed to keep his post as a consensus choice, even if his bloc does not win.
Once the assembly is elected it will choose a president and two vice presidents who then select a prime minister to form a government. None has to be a member of the assembly. The ethnic and religious makeup of the top positions is expected to replicate the structure of the interim government: A president who is Sunni Arab, Kurdish and Shiite vice presidents, and a Shiite prime minister. If the United Iraqi Alliance emerges on top, it will be able to make a strong case for having one of its members as vice president, possibly Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the top-ranked member of the alliance.
But Western diplomats believe the alliance does not have the right candidate to fill the powerful post of prime minister. Hakim and other senior alliance members, including Hussain Al-Shahristani, are regarded as not secular enough, too close to Sistani or unlikely to accept Kurdish demands for federalism. The alliance’s most secular figure, Ahmad Chalabi, is too discredited after his falling-out with Washington and with the interim government, the diplomats argue. In their minds, and privately in the minds of some U.S. officials in Baghdad, Allawi could well fit the bill.
