Shiite group unveils Iraq election candidates
Iraq’s most powerful Shiite groups today unveiled a unified list of 228 candidates for the January 30 elections, a key step in their bid to take a leading role in post-Saddam Iraq after years on the sidelines.
The list, however, does not include a key radical Shiite group or prominent Sunni factions.
In violence in the run-up to next month’s vote, seven Iraqis were killed in separate clashes in Baghdad and the volatile western city of Ramadi.
A car bomb also rocked a busy Mosul vegetable market, wounding two civilians, while a US soldier was injured by roadside bomb in Baghdad.
Another American soldier suffered minor injuries in a similar attack on Wednesday in Samarra, the scene of clashes that culminated in the resignation of the town’s police chief.
An aide to firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said no supporters of the radical preacher, a vehement opponent of the US-led occupation of Iraq, are in the al-Sistani-backed coalition called the United Iraqi Alliance.
But al-Sadr’s movement, which has wide grass root support among impoverished and young Shiites, has previously sent mixed messages about its role in the country’s political process.
“We have not participated in this list and we are still suspending our participation in the elections,”
Ali Semeisim said from the Shiite Muslim stronghold of Najaf in southern Iraq.
“We have been subjected to a campaign of suppression and the arrests against al-Sadr followers are continuing.”
Al-Sadr’s supporters had said earlier they would not participate in the polls, which Iraq’s majority Shiite Muslims are expected to dominate, but it was believed they might be able to work out a compromise.
Independent Sunni Muslims belonging to various tribal groups are included on the list, but no major Sunni political movements were named.
“I think that this list is a patriotic list. We hope that Iraqi people will back this list,” Sheik Fawaz al-Jarba, head of the powerful Sunni Shemar tribes in the northwestern city of Mosul, said at the end of the conference.
A Shiite Kurdish group, members of the Yazidis minority religious sect, and a Turkomen movement were also included on the multi-party list for the elections - the first popular vote since Saddam Hussein’s ousting.
Iraqis will choose a 275-member assembly that will write a permanent constitution. If adopted in a referendum next year, the constitution would form the legal basis for another general election to be held by December 15, 2005.
Under an election law adopted this year, there will be no electoral boundaries for the January vote, with the entire country treated as a single constituency.
Major parties representing Iraq’s 20% minority Sunnis have called for the vote’s postponement because they say the country is not secure enough.
Sunni clerics from the Association of Muslim Scholars urged Sunnis to boycott the election to protest against last month’s US-led assault on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.
The influential religious group reiterated its call for Sunnis to boycott the polls, describing as “madness” plans to hold them in January.
“The association’s stance toward the elections is firm and unchanged – we will not take a part in these elections because … no elections can be held under the pressure of the Americans and the … deteriorating security situation,” said Sheik Mohamed Bashar Al-Faidhi, an association spokesman.
Shiites comprise 60% of Iraq’s 26 million population. Despite their numbers, they’ve enjoyed little political power in Iraq, particularly under Saddam, who belonged to Iraq’s minority Sunni community.
In another play for post-election power, a senior Kurdish official said a Kurd should be made either president or prime minister following the polls.
“We have the right to ask for one of the (two) top positions in the government after the elections and we insist on taking one of them,” Arsalan Biez, a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan’s political bureau, said from the northeastern city of Sulaimaniyah.
“We are as a nation like other world’s nations and we must receive our rights and demands.”
Kurds are estimated to number between 15% and 20% of the population and have enjoyed regional self-rule in the north since 1991.
| Related Stories: |
|
