Reidar Visser, who must be the western world’s leading UIA-ologist, has come out with his latest analysis on the seats won in Iraq’s new 275-member parliament by the United Iraqi Alliance, which is the large, catch-all electoral “list” fielded in the December elections by a coalition of Shiite parties.
The main development there since Visser produced his last piece of UIA-ology on January 20, is the distribution within the UIA of the 19 “compensatory” or “national” seats that the list was awarded. Visser had warned back in january that the distribution of these seats would be hard fought over among the parties within the list… and indeed that seems to have been the case. But the upshot was that SCIRI/Badr seems to have competed the most successfully in that internecine, intra-party contest– and came out with 9 of those 19 seats despite having earlier won only 19% of the more fairly allocated “governorate-level” seats.
Of the 19 national seats, Visser writes that the pro-Moqtada Sadrist bloc was awarded 3, the Fadila Sadrist bloc 2, Daawa (Iraq)– one, and 4 went to independents.
Visser’s analysis of the final allocation of the UIA’s 128 total seats is therefore as follows:
- SCIRI/Badr: 23%– 29 seats
pro-Moqtada Sadrists: 22% — 28 seats
Fadila Sadrists: 13% — 17 seats
Daawa: 10% — 13 seats
Daawa (Iraq): 10% — 13 seats
Independents: 22% — 28 seats
His political-analysis bottom line is this:
- Even after this impressive catch of [“national”] seats by SCIRI, the internal UIA structure remains multiplex and without any obvious point of gravity. Recent political developments only serve to emphasise this. Complaints about the internal distribution of “national” seats have been loud, with some threatening to leave the coalition. The ongoing contest over the Alliance’s candidate for prime minister has also taken a lot longer than UIA leaders had envisaged; some of the smaller parties such as Hizb al-Fadila have even fielded candidates of their own. And Sadrists have continued protesting against federalism, claiming that the issue should at least be postponed until all foreign forces have left Iraq. The Sadrist subtext seems to be that the whole course of Iraqi politics today is influenced by the presence of foreign troops (and their influential diplomats, who are in the habit of paying frequent visits to a highly select pick of Iraqi politicians), and that normal conditions will only come once the external factor diminishes in importance. That point may conceivably even be aimed at the internal politics of the United Iraqi Alliance, where SCIRI is far ahead of everyone else in expertly cultivating bilateral ties with foreign powers.
Well, as I noted here on Tuesday, Moqtada’s also been making a series of “premier-in-waiting” type calls on foreign powers– namely, on Iraqi neighbors Iran, Syria, and next up Saudi Arabia.
And today, AP reported that the meeting of UIA pols this afternoon that had previously been “spun” (by the SCIRI types) as the gathering that would generate the name for the UIA’s candidate for PM, resulted instead in yet another deadlock.
That AP piece, by Qassi Abu-Zahra, reported that,
- the vote was postponed for at least a day at the request of the faction loyal to the anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr because of differences with another group, according to Shiites who attended the meeting.
Shiite officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations, said the al-Sadr faction was leaning toward Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
Another Shiite group had doubts about al-Jaafari, and al-Sadr’s lieutenants wanted time to confer, the officials said.
The disagreement could strengthen the position of the other major candidate — Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi, a French-educated former finance minister backed by the country’s top Shiite group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in
Iraq.
The choice of the umbrella Shiite alliance is assured of becoming prime minister because Shiites won the most parliament seats in national elections. The alliance, however, is a collection of Shiite parties and factions with individual agendas, not a cohesive organization.
The winning candidate will need a simple majority of the 128 parliamentarians.
I haven’t had time to get into the Arabic-language press on these late-breaking developments. Anyone who has, please post a link and a summary in the comments.
My DDI counter here tells me, meanwhile, that it’s been an amazing 58 days since the Iraqi election, and they still don’t have a government accountable to the elected parliament. Could it be– shock! horror! (irony alert)– that there has been political interference from foreign powers that has sought to sway the outcome??
But Reidar, thanks again for your great work on this. Am I missing something, or does a lot now hang on the choices made by that large number of “Independents”?
So, Sadr’s influence grows. That’s pretty horrible news for the neocons.
and worse for the Iraqis!
A short Reuter’s wire just informs that the UIA has chosen Al’Jaafari as prime minister.
Al’Mehdi was portrayed as favoring free market more than Al’Jaafari and it makes sense that the Sadrists preferred him to Al’Jaafari.
The Iraqi Democracy is being born. The head is out of the birth canal but the umbilical cord is not yet cut. The baby is breathing and is giving off healthy screams. Some minor birth defects have been noted but nothing crippling. We look forward to seeing what sort of character will be developing.
Success has a thousand fathers — I expect the number of proud Papas to grow exponentially as time goes on.
Christiane, thanks for that. yes, I just read it on the AP wire, too.
However, my clear reading is that the sadrists preferred Jaafari– or, more likely, sought to block SCIRI and Abdul-Mehdi.
WW, regarding birthing metaphors I am always particularly wary of them. 27 years ago today I delivered my second child, and I can assure you (1) that the role of the father in producing a baby is almost infinitesimal compared with the role of the mother in gestating, delivering, and then nusring her/him, (indeed, gestating and delivering can be life-threatening for the mother); (2) the work of childrearing goes on for many years thereafter and can be shared equitably between parents of both genders but most usually isn’t; and (3) that these kinds of metaphors can be extremely patronizing… (Hey, ever wonder why there’s no female analogue of ‘patronizing’, ‘paternalistic’, or ‘patronage’?)
So in brief, whoever wants to claim to bea ‘papa’ can do so. But it doesn’t actually mean that much. So that brings me nicely back from the digression to our main topic here, Iraq…
The Iraqi Democracy is being born. The head is out of the birth canal but the umbilical cord is not yet cut. The baby is breathing and is giving off healthy screams. Some minor birth defects have been noted but nothing crippling. We look forward to seeing what sort of character will be developing. Success has a thousand fathers — I expect the number of proud Papas to grow exponentially as time goes on. Posted by WarrenW at February 12, 2006 06:54 AM
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Helena,
You are right, I just wrote the reverse of what I wanted to say :
aka that “and it makes sense that the Sadrists preferred Al’Jaafari to Al’Mahdi”.
Al’Jaafari makes more sense, because Al’Mahdi is a free marketeer while Al’Sadr made it relatively clear that he doesn’t want free market for the oil industry.
(One question may be whether the state will have the money to invest in the needed repairs of the oil infrastructures.. Mmmm or also whether the big oil companies are willing to do it given the bad security conditions and the expansive investments needed. On this subject, Salam Pax has just entered an interesting new entryin his blog :
In fact, I’ve read somewhere else that among the two fractions of Sadrists in the UIA, Al’Sadr’s followers preferred Al’Jaafari and the other fraction preferred Al’Mahdi. The decision was apparently postponed because they wanted to make a consensual decision on this issue and the Sadrists asked for one more day of reflexion.
The mountain gives birth to a mouse. In the end, after all “democratic” noises, it is still good old Al-Jaafari from Dawa!
Al-Jaafari tapped to be Iraqi premier: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/0CF9242F-F9DD-400B-9035-3657B883AC27.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibrahim_al-Jaafari
Helena,
the other major candidate — Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi, a French-educated former finance minister backed by the country’s top Shiite group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in
Iraq.
Some thing usfel to know aboy malty face/colr guy his name Adil Abdul-Mahdi
1960- Bath party member – senior member of the party
1966- One of the leaders of to support and hiring Iraqis for guerrilla war in the Marsh south of Iraq
1970th- Markist supporter more that the Marxist
1970- After months he changed from Marxist to Khomeini’s after Khomeini revelation in Iran. with deep involvement in the Khomeini styles Ashur all this “Rubbish”
a French-educated
He did not finished his PhD degree from France because his theses provoked by his supervisor on bases that his theses is more religious context than economics that his study
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