Maliki’s emerging as strongest among Shiite parties in elections – expert

BAGHDAD / Aswa al-Iraq: Sam Parker, Iraq Program Officer, United States Institute of Peace and an expert on Iraq, says leaked results from Iraq’s January 31 provincial elections indicate the Dawa party of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is emerging as the strongest Shiite party in the largely Shiite south, replacing the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) party. In the north, the apparent victory of Sunni candidates in Mosul, displacing Kurds, is a positive development because it could instill Sunni confidence in the political system, Parker said in an interview with the New York Times, published on Sunday. He also says there is considerable posturing in Anbar Province, where some Sunni tribal leaders resent that the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party seems to be winning. These elections are important, he says, because “the results might indicate what the broader political trends are in Iraq.” Iraq had its provincial elections on January 31. We won’t have final results for several weeks, and there may still be problems in places such as Anbar province. First of all, it’s important to realize that there’s a whole lot of gaming of these results going on in Iraq to win the perceptions game at the outset. There’s not only a decent amount at stake in being able to control the provincial councils that will emerge from these elections, but much more important is how the results might indicate what the broader political trends are in Iraq. That is why now you’re seeing everybody claiming victory. If you add up the percentages of votes in certain provinces that certain parties are claiming you get something like 180 percent. When the results finally come out, the narrative that we’re seeing emerge, that the SIIC got “wiped out,” that Prime Minister Maliki has emerged strong, that [former Prime Minister Iyad] Allawi made a strong showing is going to be entrenched regardless of what the results say. I can speculate on what I think the conventional wisdom is and what is likely to emerge. Go ahead. What you’re seeing first of all, in the south, is that Maliki has emerged as a very strong player. That’s one element of it. But it’s important to put it in context. Maliki was chosen as prime minister because he was a mutually acceptable compromise to what, at the time, were the two opposing ends of Shiite politics in Iraq, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, as it is known today, and the Sadrists, loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr. Maliki’s Dawa Party was very weak. Dawa came to Iraq with no popular base, no militia, and was really quite small in numbers. Some of the members had spent time in the West and many of them were academics and doctors, but they weren’t really a popular political movement. Maliki, the prime minister, has been a beneficiary of the successes of the past two years and has used the power of patronage to build up his support and to establish tribal support councils which are sort of a military counterweight to his rivals in various areas. He has strengthened his control all over Iraq. And from having access to money and resources and being the main political player as the central government emerged, he was able to recruit strong candidates throughout the south and really build up a constituency. It’s interesting, because about a year ago, he was regarded in the West as very weak and without any real political standing. I don’t want to think of him as some kind of Abraham Lincoln. He has been very lucky. He’s been a beneficiary of the U.S. surge. He’s been a beneficiary of the Anbar Tribal Awakening. He’s had a lot of things go right, and he’s been rewarded for that. The SIIC controlled the Baghdad provincial council and seven of the nine southern, mostly Shiite provincial councils. The reason they did that was because in January 2005, the Sadrists were not organized. They were not a force. Dawa, like I said before, was not a forc