BAGHDAD, 4 November 2005 — Iraq’s ruling Shiite Islamist Alliance party has no lack of enemies as it prepares for an election in six weeks time but sectarian loyalties should ensure it still dominates the next parliament, analysts say.
Assailed by minority Sunni insurgents, criticized by its own voters for economic stagnation, deserted by former allies and unloved by the US occupiers, the United Iraqi Alliance should again take the bulk of votes among the 60-percent Shiite majority as it did in January’s ballot for the interim assembly. Three main Islamist parties making up the Alliance patched up their differences last week in time to register on Friday as a united list; it should capitalize on clerical backing and fears among voters to see off any challenge to its dominance from defectors who set up rival groups and from secular leaders.
That will set up a confrontation with Sunni Arabs, in Parliament for the first time in numbers after a January boycott. Sunnis are being encouraged to vote partly by a US-brokered promise of renegotiating the constitution that was drafted under Alliance rule and newly passed despite Sunni opposition at a referendum. “The Alliance will emerge the strongest again from this election; it will remain the most powerful,” said Jaber Habib, politics professor at Baghdad University. “The election itself will divide on sectarian and ethnic lines and Shiites don’t think they have much of a choice.” With voters increasingly entrenched in mutually fearful sectarian and ethnic camps, the Alliance retains an aura of religious authority derived from its support from Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani and will appeal to the once oppressed Shiites to stick together under one banner for protection.
“In the hearts and minds of the Iraqis we represent the Shiites,” Alliance official Abbas Bayati told Reuters. “That’s what we have inherited from the last election and this what we are going to use in December’s election ... Religion is key.”
Several groups, including the Islamist Fadila party, Ahmad Chalabi’s secular Iraqi National Congress and independents led by Ali Dabagh have defected from the Alliance in recent days. But at its core remain the two great parties of Shiite politics, Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari’s Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) led by Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, plus the younger third force of Moqtada Al-Sadr. “All these withdrawals and separate lists will not affect it really because it depends on strong symbols like Abdul Aziz Al- Hakim and others,” Baghdad University’s Habib said.
With much of Saddam Hussein’s oncedominant 20-percent Sunni Arab minority shunning the Jan. 30 vote to the interim assembly, the Alliance’s grip on the Shiite majority gave it more than half the seats and it has ruled alongside a united Kurdish bloc.
There has been disenchantment, including violence, in the Shiite heartland over government failures to improve security or bring prosperity; the Alliance has irritated US officials trying to steer Iraq’s reformation, partly by alienating Sunnis and by seeming too close to the Shiite clerics ruling Iran.That has prompted speculation of an alternative leadership — say, including Sunnis, Kurds and the bloc of secular Shiite former Premier Iyad Allawi. Yet the Alliance seems likely to remain the biggest player.
Sectarian violence unleashed on all sides after the US invasion has driven even secular Iraqis toward the perceived protection of a wider ethnic or religious community. “With all this violence against the Shiites and all this killing it will draw the Shiite voter to the Alliance because it looks the strongest party in their minds,” Habib said.
