Shi-ite-led list unveiled

At a press conference in Baghdad a couple of hours ago Hussain al-Shahristani, the Iraqi Shi-ite pol (and former nuclear scientist) who was tipped for the “interim PM” post that Allawi finally got last June, unveiled the electoral list of the United Iraqi Alliance, that he and Ayatollah Sistani have worked at putting together.
Reuters and AP both have reports on Shahristani’s press conference. They are significantly different, so I just decided to archive both accounts together.
JWN readers are no doubt aware that the election is for a constitutional assembly – cum- parliament that will have 275 members, one-third of whom must be women. There’s a single-constituency, p.r. system for voting, similar to Israel’s. In other words, voters vote for a single party (or coalition) list, and then the seats are divided among the lists according to how many votes each receives. Obviously, it’s better for a candidate to be placed near the top of the relevant list as he or she then gets a better chance of being voted in.
So a lot of the jockeying in list-formation goes on around the position of each named candidate on the list. I think each of the lists presented has to have a woman in each third place.
The UIA list presented by Shahristani today contains the names of 228 candidates, indicating that its architects are hoping to win as many as that number of seats in the assembly.
On the crucial issue of Moqtada al-Sadr’s relationship with this list, the Reuters and AP accounts differ significantly. AP reported that,

Shahristani said the movement of firebrand anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had been left off the list because it has not registered with Iraq’s electoral commission. It was not immediately clear if any al-Sadr supporters were on the list as independents.
“The Sadrist movement announced that it supports the religious authorities and its call for Iraqis to hold elections,” al-Shahristani added. “It also supports the list.” Shahristani, said the movement of firebrand anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had been left off the list because it has not registered with Iraq’s electoral commission. It was not immediately clear if any al-Sadr supporters were on the list as independents.
“The Sadrist movement announced that it supports the religious authorities and its call for Iraqis to hold elections,” al-Shahristani added. “It also supports the list.”

The Reuters report said, by contrast:

Representatives from the movement led by Moqtada al-Sadr, a rebellious young cleric who has led two uprisings against U.S. forces in Iraq this year, are also in the coalition, although Sadr and his chief religious advisers are not involved.

Since AP had an apparent (though not directly cited) quote from Shahristani on the issue of whether the Sadrist movement was included on the list or not, that seems more definitive but who knows. Even that account asserts, however, that the Sadrists will support the list; so that may be the most important thing (if true).
Parties and groupings prominently represented on the list include the two big Shi-ite parties, Da’wa and SCIRI, plus Chalabi’s INC.
Also on the list are some Kurds and some Turkmen, quite possibly all of them also Shi-ites. (Most Kurds, however, are Sunnis, so the Shi-ite/Yazidi Kurds on the UIA list may not pull in huge numbers of Kurdisah votes.)
Regarding non-Shi-ites, the two wire service accounts again differ a little in their assessment of the “weight” of the Sunni Arabs included on the list. AP says that,

Independent Sunni Muslims belonging to various tribal groups are included on the list, but no major Sunni political movements were named.

Well, it may be true that no major “Sunni political movements” were there. But at least one significant Sunni tribal confederation is apparently represented on the list since the AP account goes on to note that Sheik Fawaz al-Jarba, described as ” head of the powerful Sunni Shemar [Shamar?] tribes in the northwestern city of Mosul”, participated in the press conference and gave it this endorsement: “I think that this list is a patriotic list. We hope that Iraqi people will back this list.”
The Reuters account explicitly says that “the chief of the Shamar”– presumably Jarba– is included on the list. It would of course be interesting to know how many other Sunnis have been included on it as well; also Christians, who are mentioned nowhere in the two wire-service accounts; also, of course, to know the exact position that Jarba and all the other mentioned parties have been given on the UIA list.
Re Jarba and the Shamar, Reuters adds:

The inclusion of the tribe, led by Sheikh Fouaz al-Jarba, a cousin of Iraq’s interim president, would appear to be a particularly astute move as Iraq’s security forces battle to suppress an insurgency thought to be led by Sunni extremists.

Anyway, no doubt we’ll be getting a lot more of the information we need about the exact composition of the UIA list over the days ahead. I for one would really love to see whether it includes any Christians– and equally importantly, whether it includes them in the “higher” positions on the list where they are likely to get elected.
I note that of Hizbullah’s 12 members in the Lebanese parliament, two are Sunnis and one a Christian. That is of course a very different voting system; but still, it will be interesting to see if Shahristani, Sistani, Chalabi, and the other Shi-ite pols who’ve pulled the UIA list together have aimed at, and succeeded in, getting Christians onto it.
It also seems to me significant that this group of Shi-ite community leaders have been so apparently effective in building and presenting a unified national list. The two Kurdish parties have announced their intention to do so, but haven’t presented their list yet. I find that quite surprising, since the Kurdish parties have a much longer history of engaging in open political-party life– which they have done in semi-independent Kurdistan throughout the past decade– than the Shi-ites, who I previously thought might have a major problem transitioning from extremely scary and violent “politics” of operating as shadowy underground movements, to open political life.
In the end, the ability of the Iraqi Shi-ites to be able to pursue peaceful politics among themselves– and also, to fold into that political life all the other members of the Iraqi community– is the very best guarantee for the building of a stable, decent society in Iraq.
Some people in the west go on and on about sticking up for the rights of minorities. But you can never have even the hope of decent political system– in Iraq, in South Africa or elsewhere– if the rights of the majority grouping inside the population are systematically violated on a continuing basis. So let’s not put the cart before the horse, eh? Let’s see the majority having a good chance of getting their rights assured, and then within the resulting political system of course the protection of minorities is crucial. Smart leaders inside the “majority” communities can also generally be trusted to see that this is in their own best interests, too…