Iraq Shiites Offer Election Slate

Iraq’s leading Shiite parties Thursday announced a slate of 228 candidates for the Jan. 30 elections, a team that could give the Shiite Muslim majority a significant share of power for the first time in the nation’s history.

Calling itself the United Iraqi Alliance, the group appears to have the backing of the country’s senior Shiite clerics, including Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Although the slate includes some powerful Sunni Muslim and Kurdish politicians, it largely excludes powerful Sunni factions, whose decision to sit out the elections could threaten the credibility of the balloting and further stoke sectarian tensions.

Iraqi leaders and their U.S. backers are gambling that enough Sunnis will vote to make the elections credible. But it is also possible that many Sunnis will shun the balloting and become even more supportive of the insurgency.

Candidates elected to a transitional assembly in January will play a key role in drafting the Iraqi Constitution, which would shape the country’s future.

“Sunnis can be persuaded to participate but not on this timetable,” said Joost Hiltermann, director of the International Crisis Group’s Amman, Jordan, office, which also monitors Iraq. “This isn’t any election, this is the most important election because the people elected are going to include those who are going to write a constitution for Iraq.... Everything should be done to bring the Sunnis in.”

The slate includes the former Pentagon favorite, Ahmad Chalabi, but not interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, who commands considerable support in the capital and other urban centers. The alliance said one-third of its candidates would be women.

Being on a slate is crucial because when Iraqis go the polls they will choose among several lists of candidates -- not vote for individuals. Each slate will have 275 names. It is unlikely that Iraqis will recognize all the candidates. The top several names will be the best known and probably influence voters’ choices.

Sistani has ordered a massive get-out-the-vote campaign for the elections, aware that the balloting represents Shiites’ best chance to win the power that dictator Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi leaders denied them.

Top officials of the United Iraqi Alliance will announce their platform in the coming weeks, but one key figure said they would pledge to start negotiations on a schedule for withdrawal of U.S.-led forces from the country as soon as a new government is elected.

Thursday’s announcement of the group’s formation was a signal that the elections seem all but certain to go forward despite doubts about the viability of balloting in mainly Sunni areas of Iraq controlled by insurgents.

“Sayeed Al Sistani sees elections as the only possible way to move forward from the current political crisis,” said Hussein Shahristani, a nuclear scientist who fled Iraq in 1991. He has spent the last two months recruiting candidates and organizing the list with five people appointed by Sistani and other senior Shiite clerics. “The most important thing is to hold free and fair elections on time.”

Diplomats agreed that a postponement of the elections was unlikely, despite widespread calls for such action.

“I’m pretty confident these elections will take place on the [30th] of January,” said a Western diplomat in Baghdad. “But you know the problems: security ... reaching out to the greater Sunni community ... that’s going to be a hard slog.”

Allawi’s omission from the slate was notable. The interim prime minister is a Shiite, but he is also secular and the leader of the Iraqi National Accord, a party made up primarily of former members of Hussein’s Baath Party.

Shahristani said Allawi was invited to join the list on two occasions but apparently decided not to. Allawi was traveling in Russia and could not be reached for comment.

Also missing from the slate are individuals and clerics associated with Sadr, the young cleric who led rebellions against U.S.-led forces in Najaf and Sadr City this year.

Sadr, whose followers live in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City and in urban centers across southern Iraq, hinted that he might join the alliance but backed off at the last minute. It was unclear whether he would endorse the list.

Some analysts say the absence of Sadr from the alliance could reduce its popularity in some Shiite areas.

Chalabi was on the alliance’s podium Thursday, wedged between a Sunni sheik from the northern city of Mosul and a representative of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The former Pentagon favorite is the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, a political group formerly in exile.

The inclusion of Chalabi, who is unpopular with many Iraqis, suggested that he was trying to remake himself after losing favor with Washington. “He’s been trying to get close to these groups for a long time now and has succeeded to a certain extent because of his political skills and Shiite identity,” said Jaber Habib, a professor of political science at Baghdad University.

The list includes the Dawa Party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, some Sunni tribal leaders, representatives of several Turkmen parties, and several groups representing Shiite Kurds, who are a minority in the largely Sunni Kurdistan region of northern Iraq.

Shiite religious leaders are widely expected to use today’s prayers in mosques to urge voters to support a slate with a significant number of independents. About half the alliance’s list is made up of people with no party affiliation.

For the elections, Iraq will be designated as a single electoral district in which voters will cast ballots for representatives for the entire country. When the votes are counted, seats will be apportioned based on how many votes each list gets. If a slate wins 20% of the votes, the top 20% of the people on the list will get seats in the transitional national assembly.

Shiites make up about 60% of Iraqis, but the country has not had a census in many years so an exact count is not possible.

Francis Brooke, Chalabi’s U.S. political advisor, estimated that the alliance’s list would garner at least 150 seats in the assembly, while Kurdish parties would take between 50 and 70 seats, leaving the remainder for the Sunnis -- if they participate.

Shahristani said the alliance wanted to see Sunni participation, but it was unclear what role the group would play in encouraging it. It made a gesture toward Sunnis by including a prominent member of the Shamar tribe in the slate. The tribe is one of the largest in Iraq and includes both Sunnis and Shiites. The Sunni sheik from Mosul, a Shamar member, was placed near the top of the list.

Iraq’s interim president, Ghazi Ajil Yawer, also belongs to the tribe but has formed his own political party and plans to put together his own slate.

“Sunni participation is extremely important, and we are going to do all that is possible ... to make sure conditions are created to allow people to express their choice,” Shahristani said.