Iraq parties line up for election
01 November, 2005
BAGHDAD: Iraqi political parties worked Monday on fine-tuning their strategies ahead of the December 15 general elections after violence took more than a dozen more lives, mainly among civilians.
Major lists created for Iraq’s next election mostly reflect sectarian or religious divisions, but a political scientist pointed to small secular alliances that cut across communal divides. "What you are watching now are the big lists," political science professor Wamid Nadhmi told AFP.
"I think in every single town there are small lists that to a certain extent represent this tendency of non-sectarian politics."
He singled out one in particular, the Democratic Justice and Reform Party, and added: "People are trying to find some secular lists, they would like to vote for them because it corresponds more to their ideas about political life in Iraq." Alliances by established Shiite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish parties were still expected to win the most seats in the 275-member parliament when elections are held December 15 in the final stretch of the country’s year-long transition to democracy.
The new legislature is to replace a transitional parliament elected in January, and serve for four years, its first full term since Saddam Hussein’s regime was toppled in April 2003. Among top contenders, Nadhmi said: "He who represents the secular trend is Mr. Allawi, he spoke very much against the sectarian tendencies as a threat to the unity of the country."
Former prime minister Iyad Allawi, who heads the Iraqi National List and has backing in Washington, warns that "growing ethnic polarisation risks causing endless conflict in Iraq which could also split along sectarian lines." Nadhmi nonetheless also noted: "When it comes to Mr Allawi himself, people won’t forget he was an ardent supporter of the occupation and that his period witnessed the massacres in Fallujah, Kuffa, Najaf and Samarra." Two are Sunni towns and two are dominated by Shiites and all were the sites of fierce fighting with US-led forces.
"I think some people would like to vote for him but they have serious reservations about his short political past," the Baghdad University professor said.afp
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