So where are they now, all those pundits and experts in Iraqi affairs who’ve been telling us non-stop since the December elections that SCIRI’s Abdel-Aziz Hakim is “the most powerful politician in Iraq”?
Ever since December 20, I’ve been saying— hey, wait a minute! It certainly looks true that the UIA did very well in the election– but don’t just assume that Hakim and SCIRI are the strongest force inside the UIA!
That day, and on Dec. 22, and Dec. 27, and many times since then I’ve been saying the same thing, and pointing to the very important tussle that’s been going on inside the UIA.
Very early on there, the Norwegian researcher Reidar Visser started coming in with some solid data indicating that– as I had judged might well be the case– Moqtada Sadr and his people was much stronger inside the UIA than the western pundits’ “consensus” seemed to think, and SCIRI/Hakim correspondingly weaker.
Just until a couple of days ago, western media people in Baghdad were still routinely describing Hakim as “the most powerful pol in Iraq.”
But he got upstaged and out-maneuvered, didn’t he? The UIA swung behind outgoing Premier Ibrahim Jaafari, instead. Jaafari’s Daawa Party (both branches) only got 26 of the UIA’s 128 seats in the parliament– fewer than SCIRI’s 29. But the two branches of Sadrists got 45 seats, and Sadr swung behind Jaafari, most likely in an effort to block SCIRI.
Visser did a pretty good job in this Jan. 20 post of describing the differences in political approach between SCIRI and the Sadrists. One main one has to do with federalism: SCIRI and Hakim have expressed themselves strongly in favor of a radical decentralization/dissolution of the Iraqi state, whereas the Sadrists– including in the south of Iraq– are much more in favor of keeping the unitary state.
How did so much of the US MSM– and even, on some occasions, Juan Cole– manage to get it so wrong about Hakim being (or not being) the “most powerful politician in Iraq”? In that same post, too, Visser refers to SCIRI’s “slick and professional” leadership style…
Well, Jaafari and the Sadrists winning this one is only the first step toward forming a sovereign, independent government in Iraq, which surely should be the goal of all concerned. The parliament is now due to convene within the next two weeks. It will elect a President, and then a prime Minister. There are many, many hurdles still to cross. But wouldn’t it be great if Sadr and his allies were truly able to reach out to form a ruling coalition made of people who are, as he seems to me to be, strong and politically effective Iraqi nationalists?
4 thoughts on “Jaafari gets UIA nomination”
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Jaafari has been called many things but “strong and politically effective” he is NOT. He has been a woefully inept Prime Minister and does not enjoy good relations with either the Sunnis or Kurds. Riding the Sadr tiger may keep him in office in the short term but it is a questionable proposition for even someone with ten times his dexterity.
Several hypotheses can be made as to why Al Jaafari was chosen for PM again.
1) From what I’ve read, the two Sadrists fractions of the UIA weren’t both supporting Jaafari. Al Sadr’ fraction was, but the Fadila Sadrists was rumored to prefer Al Mahdi.
2) May be that there is a consensus that Jaafari did what he could, given the circumstances. If not even the Americans have been able to provide basic services and security, what could a weak do the Iraqis ?
3) May be it suits the other factions of the UIA to have a relatively weak PM ?
I’ve translated an interesting interviewissued by Le Monde with Mahmoud Darwich a Palestinian poet. He speaks about the emergence of Islamist parties in ME wherever there are democratic elections; he gives his advice on the cartoon issue and on the I/P conflict.
I think the results of the PM contest are interesting. Data on bloc affiliations have of course a value in themselves, but the information they provide is quite theoretical. These results show the magnitude of the segment within the UIA that is prepared to actually break ranks with SCIRI in a vote, even if it means damaging the beau ideal of internal consensus. As the vote was secret, the exact voting patterns may never get known, but Muqtada’s Sadrists and the two Daawa factions alone hold no more than 54 seats (and one Sadrist was absent) so there must definitely have been additional Jaafari supporters outside those parties. Jaafari probably also got support from two Sadrist Risaliyun deputies who ran independently of the UIA but now seem to have been admitted to the coalition, at least for this vote. That still leaves 9 votes to reach the 64 figure which is most often quoted as the winner’s total (63 to Adil Abd al-Mahdi + 64 to Jaafari + 2 blank votes and one deputy absent = 130 (128 UIA + 2 Risaliyun)). Thus, there must have been “defectors” from the independents and the Fadila Sadrists – whose most prominent figures, Husayn al-Shahristani and Nadim al-Jabiri respectively, were thought to favour Abd al-Mahdi.
In this context, it is important that yesterday’s vote was about accepting the PM candidature of the very likeable Abd al-Mahdi, whom SCIRI media have been grooming for a larger role for at least a half-year now. But what about those issues that are even more contentious, like federalism south of Baghdad? I suspect that more rebels may materialise among the 63 Abd al-Mahdi supporters if and when such issues get on the agenda.
Hi Reidar, thanks for that as always informative contribution. Do you (or anyone else here) have any idea whether the UIA can be expected to stick together as a bloc as it comes to making national-level decisions on what seem to me to be the two key issues of federalism and the US presence?
Last year’s transitional ‘government’ never really got to make decisions on anything– except the Interim Constitution, in which many vital points were left undecided. This year’s government will be facing big issues very rapidly. (Once it gets formed… )
Sistani’s “hidden hand” guided the UIA through the election process. To what extent can we expect it to continue to guide the UIA through these upcoming big decisions? Or to what extent will the Iranian government organs want to have their own big say on these matters? Can anyone analyze definitively whether Sistani favors certain portions within the UIA while Teheran favors others?