Al-Qabas analy­sis the pre-voting sit­u­a­tion in few Iraqi regions, but the most impor­tant part in their report is the West-region [Anbar].

The report says that there is a “bat­tle” in the province between the Islamic Party and the tribal orga­ni­za­tions. The Islamic Party man­aged to crack the tribes and forms a coali­tion with the leader of the “Awak­en­ing Coun­cil” Abu-Risha under the name “The Progress Coali­tion of the Intel­lec­tu­als and Tribes”.

Al-Qabas report con­cludes that the elec­tion final image is still not clear but the expec­ta­tions that Al-Sadr is the election’s “black-horse”, who will obtain many votes espe­cially with his increas­ing pop­u­lar­ity among the Iraqi public.

There is one “strange” state­ment came from Sadrist woman MP Liqa’a Yaseen say­ing on Al-Hayat that Muq­tada Al-Sadr is very close to obtain his “Ijti­had” cer­tifi­cate [the high­est rank in Shiite-theology].

The weird thing is that nor­mally, Shi­ite reli­gious stu­dents take three years to obtain such a rank [in Sadr case that will be in 2011].

Away from the above report, I need to explain some facts about Mosul [Nainawa Province].

It sounds very strange that the Kurds hold the major­ity seats in the Province Coun­cil while the Kurds are the minor­ity in Mosul. Most of the Kurds in Mosul are in one small city called “Shikhan” and few sub­urbs in Mosul-city. The spe­cial cir­cum­stances of the pre­vi­ous elec­tion change the demog­ra­phy of Mosul’s map.

The Elec­tion Com­mit­tee rejected the Kurds demand of post­pon­ing the elec­tion in Mosul Province because of the votes of 46,000 “dis­placed” Kurds since 1973 as the Kur­dish mem­bers in the Province Coun­cil claim which is rejected the Islamic Party and the Supreme Coun­cil, who formed a gov­ern­ment coali­tion with the Kurds.

Things are going bad in Basra as well for the new “Basra-Federate” votes, the Supreme Coun­cil rejected the plan say­ing that the pro­ce­dures are ille­gal. But the worst is the Arab League’s rejec­tion to meet with a del­e­ga­tion from Basra to explain the new “project”.

6 Comments

  1. motown67 December 21st, 2008

    I don’t know how Sadr’s going to do well in the provin­cial elec­tions. The last pub­lic opin­ion poll I’ve seen saw Sadr as the 8th most pop­u­lar polit­i­cal fig­ure in the coun­try. More impor­tantly, the elec­tion laws favor the large par­ties because the provin­cial seats will be given accord­ing to how many votes they get across the entire province. Sadr has no national party either. Run­ning with inde­pen­dents and smaller polit­i­cal par­ties as he said his fol­low­ers will do will not be to their advantage.
  2. LadyBird December 21st, 2008

    motown67

    1) Al-Sadr said that he will par­tic­i­pate in the elec­tion with­out a political-party but he will sup­port “inde­pen­dent” candidates.

    A very clever move because the can­di­dates will not asso­ci­ated a polit­i­cal party and the best part is that Al-Sadr can aban­dons them when­ever he wants.

    2) This is my advise for the “future-polls”: never believe a sin­gle poll from the Mid­dle East, if it comes from Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Ara­bia, Egypt.…etc.

    The coun­tries are not a “poll-culture” and peo­ple divided into dif­fer­ent eth­nic and reli­gious loyalties.

    While there is not a sin­gle poll can reveal the pub­lic opin­ion, the best indi­ca­tion is: How big your “eth­nic, reli­gious” com­mu­nity (ie Hamas.…Hezbollah.…).

    For Al-Sadr it is the same… there are about 3 mil­lion res­i­dents in Sadr-City in Bagh­dad, lets assume that the half of them are Sadr sup­port­ers, so what the polls say?.

    3) Large par­ties at that time decided by the U.S. take Maliki for exam­ple: A head of the State while his Dawa Party vir­tu­ally a small party with­out supporters.

    Even Al-hakim’s Supreme Coun­cil is not very pop­u­lar in Iraq [even before 2003]. The most pop­u­lar with large sup­port­ers is Al-Sadr because he came from a fam­ily [father and uncles] are all well known in Iraq for many generations.
  3. motown67 December 21st, 2008

    Again, the elec­tion law doesn’t favor inde­pen­dents nor small par­ties. Unless Sadr is able to orga­nize and finance inde­pen­dents and par­ties across entire provinces his fol­low­ers won’t get many seats on the prov. coun­cils. The Sadrists have never been known for orga­niz­ing either, and most of their money is raised locally. Not to men­tion the Mahdi mili­tia at least have been frac­tur­ing for three years now. I just wrote about Sadr’s predica­ment as well on my blog if any­one is inter­ested: http://musingsoniraq.blogspot.com. Over­all I still don’t see Sadr doing well at all in Jan. 09.
  4. LadyBird December 21st, 2008

    motown67

    Iraqi law doesn’t encour­age inde­pen­dents if they are real “inde­pen­dents” not if they are sup­ported by polit­i­cal blocs, take the guy who went to Israel for exam­ple “Mithal Al-Alusi” he is “inde­pen­dent” with­out party but elected because he is sup­ported by the Shi­ites Coalition.

    As for the finances, Sadr get his cut from the Shi­ites dona­tion [Kho­mus and Zakat] add to this inher­i­tance of his father’s and the, uncle and broth­ers cut. We are talk­ing Mil­lions of Mil­lion here if not more].

    P.S.

    I will read your piece a.s.a.p.
    Al-Sadr doesn’t need to be financed, he finances things by his own.
  5. paola pisi December 22nd, 2008

    Lady Bird,
    how do you know that HALF of Sadr city res­i­dents (i.e. 1,500,000 peo­ple) are Sadr’s sup­port­ers? Because Bre­mer changed the name of the “city of rev­o­lu­tion” (then Saddam’s city) into Sadr city? I read tons of inter­views and most of Sadr city peo­ple say they are happy that the Mahdy army thugs don’t tyranize them any­more. And the basra peo­ple too say that they are glad that finally the Mahdi army ter­ror ended. You can say that those inter­views were false, and maybe they are. But maybe are true. It would not be so strange that sadr city res­i­dents were tired of crimes, of tor­tures, of kid­nap­pings, of mur­ders… It is not so dif­fi­cult to under­stand why not every­one likes the com­mit­ters of crimes such this one : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAnFcwVWwZ8
    And in the last years Sadr city inhab­i­tans were forced to see every day such mon­strous crimes.

    I too read the poll quoted by motown67: it says that about 4% of iraqi peo­ple back Sadr and would vote his can­di­dates: http://www.iraqoilreport.com/Public_opinion_Polls_in_Iraq_from_ICRSS__Nationwide_October_2008.pdf
    You wrote that the poll is false. Maybe you are right, but maybe you are not. Sin­cerely, seems to me that yours is whis­ful think­ing: since you sup­port Sadr, you think that most of iraqis too sup­port him. But where are the evi­dences? In the lat­est sadrist ral­lies in Sadr city there were a few thou­sands of peo­ple (since the Mahdi army doesn’t force any­more the res­i­dents to take part in them). And even in the sadrist national demon­stra­tion of octo­ber 18, 2007 there were 50,000 peo­ple (largest esti­mate) from all Iraq. If, as you say, 1,500,000 sadr city inhab­i­tants like that much Sadr and his drillers, why almost none of them shows his sup­port for him?
  6. NDHF Net December 22nd, 2008

    The Iraqi par­ties, IIP, PUK, KDP, SCIRI (SIIC), Dawa are only ones with a proper “secu­rity guar­an­tee” that are designed to “sur­vive” from the elec­tion come-out-to-die trap.

    That they took the Baathists hostages shows what they’re plan­ning for them very soon. They’ll be killed just as the Sadrists.

    Any amount of col­lab­o­ra­tion can­not pro­vide other par­ties sim­i­lar per­ma­nent secu­rity guar­an­tee that the FIVE priv­i­leged ones have, since there are no more such items issued and avail­able in cir­cu­la­tion at the moment.

    From this point of view it is totally point­less to raise mutual ten­sions between those tar­geted and stand­ing in the same death row.

    NDHF Net
    http://newsdeskhelsinkifinland.net

The pre-election situation

This article was written December 20th, 2008, with the mathematical number of 6 contributions.