Slate Uses Cleric’s Image, but Its Own Suffers

The symbolism couldn’t have been less subtle.

Amid tight security in a compound still bearing the effects of a recent car bomb attack, the top candidates of the powerhouse United Iraqi Alliance slate gathered Saturday to address the media. Interim Vice President Ibrahim Jafari was there. So was former Pentagon protege Ahmad Chalabi.

Looming over them, appropriately larger than life, was the white-whiskered, heavy-browed image of arguably the most recognizable face in today’s Iraq.

As the election campaign heats up, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, even though he isn’t running for office, has become a growing source of controversy and acrimony. Protests have grown from competing parties, including that of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, over the Alliance’s use of Sistani’s image.

Sistani, whose word is law to much of Iraq’s Shiite Muslim majority, holds unmatched influence in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. More than any other person, the reclusive, Iranian-born cleric set the timetable for elections and quashed mounting calls for a delay. The Alliance, a coalition of diverse, mostly Shiite political groups, was assembled under his supervision.

From day one, the Alliance slate has been referred to widely as the Sistani list. It’s a perception that the Alliance candidates don’t mind. Campaign posters bearing Sistani’s face blanket walls in much of the country alongside bills with the official Alliance symbol: a lighted candle.

Critics say the practice violates electoral rules against the use of religious symbols. Allawi’s Iraqi National Accord has filed a protest with the electoral commission.

Another party leader, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he had also lodged a complaint. “Is Sistani not a religious symbol?” he asked rhetorically. “Are you allowed to put a picture of the pope on a poster and say, ‘The pope wants you to vote for us’?”

Alliance candidate Mowaffak Rubaie, the country’s interim national security advisor, dismissed the objections as “election rubbish.”

Sistani has not explicitly endorsed the Alliance list. But he also hasn’t spoken out to stop the use of his image on the multitude of Alliance posters. If the Alliance candidates have, as critics charge, hijacked his image for their political purposes, Sistani has at least allowed it to happen.

“There’s no shred of doubt in my mind that Sistani doesn’t object,” said Rubaie, whom Allawi stripped of many responsibilities in the fall. He retains his title.

The question of what or whom Sistani favors has no clear answer, partly because the cleric rarely appears in public and never grants interviews. The few statements he has released have focused on the general importance of participating in the elections, calling it a religious duty for Shiites, who were repressed under Hussein’s regime.

Rubaie said that in a meeting with Sistani, he “told me he was ‘satisfied with the Alliance list.’ ” In his Friday sermon at the large Shiite Bratha Mosque in Baghdad, Sheik Jalaluddin Saghir took things a step further, implying a divine reckoning for Shiites who don’t vote the right way.

“Sistani said that the one who will not vote for [the Alliance] slate has to answer to God on Judgment Day,” Saghir told worshipers.

Sistani has always preferred to keep a low profile, wielding his influence only on major issues such as the importance of direct elections on a set timetable. At a dramatic moment, he also brokered the cease-fire between U.S. forces and fighters loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr to end the August siege of Najaf, where Sistani is based.

Few observers are surprised by the Alliance’s reliance on Sistani to sell their list. In accord with Shiite Muslim tradition, Sistani and his fellow senior clerics, known as the Marjaiyah, are looked to for guidance on a host of issues, theological and mundane.

“If you were on this list, you would put Sistani’s picture on your poster,” said an official with an international organization working with Iraqi political parties, who requested anonymity. “You would be crazy not to.”

But the emphasis on Sistani may have ominous implications. Many of the diverse Shiite groups assembled on the Alliance slate are bitter rivals with little common ground other than the desire to ride Sistani’s popularity into power.

The current unity could dissolve quickly once the 275-member transitional national assembly is elected.

The international official predicted that the Shiite factions would begin to “eat themselves” shortly after the vote.

“That coalition is not long for this world,” she said. “It will not survive past the elections.”