Iraqi Candidates Plan Alliances Before Elections
Iraq is blanketed with campaign posters as it prepares for Sunday's elections. Most of the campaign slogans clamor for change. But many of the faces on the posters haven't changed from the elections four years ago, although the alliances have shifted. Major electoral slates already are haggling over how to form a ruling alliance.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
And I'm Steve Inskeep.
American officials once spoke of making Iraq a model democracy for the Middle East. After years of war, they drastically lowered those goals, and today they got another reminder of the challenges in Iraq. A series of suicide bombings killed at least 30 people today in Baqubah, north of Baghdad.
MONTAGNE: Still, there is an election on Sunday. NPR's Quil Lawrence reports from a country plastered with campaign posters.
QUIL LAWRENCE: Major projects in Iraq, as in the rest of the world, have a way of getting completed just before election time.
(Soundbite of honking)
Unidentified Man: (Foreign language spoken)
LAWRENCE: Iraqi police directed traffic across a new highway overpass in north Baghdad that links two notoriously grid locked neighborhoods. Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq's incumbent prime minister, presided over the celebration.
Prime Minister NOURI AL-MALIKI (Iraq): (Foreign language spoken)
LAWRENCE: This is only a sample, Maliki said, of the reconstruction that has been achieved in Iraq because of improved security. The message is none-too-subtle, and it has hollowed a bit after several recent bombings left hundreds dead and demolished government buildings. Despite his popularity and his liberal use of the bully pulpit, Maliki is far from a shoe-in for reelection. Iraq's politics are often seen in three pieces: the Shiite majority in the south, the Kurds in the north and a large wedge of Sunni Arabs in the middle. But the political alliances have become much more complicated.
Ms. REND RAHIM (Candidate for Prime Minister of Iraq, Secular Nationalist Party): The negotiation for these alliances is already going on, and has been going on for some time.
LAWRENCE: Rend Rahim is a candidate with the Secular Nationalist Party. She names six major electoral slates that she says have already been haggling over how to form a ruling alliance. Rahim says these six lists know they'll get a good number of votes, but no single slate will win the simple majority needed to form a government.
Ms. RAHIM: You need a majority of 50 plus one, 50 percent plus one. I don't think any political list or political group that's running for election is going to get anywhere near 51 percent.
LAWRENCE: Of the six players, Rahim herself is on the slate of Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite who has attracted nationalists from both Shiite and Sunni-Arab communities. Allawi was briefly prime minister, appointed by the Americans in 2004. Two other politicians have tried to claim a non-sectarian nationalist label: Sitting Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the current interior minister, Jawad al-Bolani. Both are Shiite, but have reached out to popular Sunnis. The other major lists are a bit more homogenous.
Shiite religious parties have banded together with a deal reputed to have been made in Iran, including the anti-American cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr. An almost purely Sunni-Arab coalition includes the speaker of parliament, Ayad al-Samarrai. Samarrai is frank that he believes Iraqis will still vote more according to sect than any political program a candidate is offering.
Mr. AYAD AL-SAMARRAI (Speaker, Iraqi Parliament): The people will vote according to loyalty rather than to programs. And when we reach to a point that people will vote for programs, than we can see there's no sectarian behavior affecting the election.
LAWRENCE: The last major factor is the Kurds, who actually have some bitter internal divisions. But with regards to the parliament in Baghdad, Kurds are expected to maximize their poll and vote as a bloc. Rowsch Shaways is a senior Kurdish politician and currently the deputy prime minister. He says the Kurds feel confident that no coalition can form a government without them.
Deputy Prime Minister ROWSCH SHAWAYS (Iraq): We are all awaiting the election, and then we will see what the negotiation then bring, depending on the results of the election.
LAWRENCE: Without big surprises, it will take at least three of the six major players to band together in order to form a government along with a few smaller independents. Almost no combinations are out of the question. Prime Minister Maliki is expected by many to get the most votes, but that doesn't guarantee he'll form the winning coalition. Maliki himself became prime minister as a weak compromise candidate, and then slowly grew into a powerful figure. Rend Rahim says that may happen again.
Ms. RAHIM: A prime minister emerging from a coalition of three or more political groups in parliament - these groups will want the prime minister to be weak. They may feel that it is in their interest not to have another Maliki.
LAWRENCE: But she adds that Maliki may have shown that there's no such thing as a weak Iraqi prime minister.
Quil Lawrence, NPR News, Baghdad. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.
