Baath Party preparations

It seems that the Baathists are aware of the the fero­cious cam­paign waged against them by the polit­i­cal fig­ures in the new Iraqi regime’s. The Party started to esca­late its polit­i­cal pres­ence by mobi­liz­ing its armed fac­tions, and releas­ing state­ments about the abil­ity to change and remove the cur­rent Iraqi regime, who is backed by U.S. forces.

Baath Party mem­bers started to argue that “the return of Baathists to the fore­front of polit­i­cal events in Iraq, is a mat­ter of time only” and Baathists even said that “Arab and Mus­lim neigh­bor­ing coun­tries, and some regional pow­ers help the Baath Party to return to power”.

For exam­ple, Abu Ali Al-Qaisi, who was a lead­ing mem­ber of the Baath Party in Fal­lu­jah, Anbar and just recently released by the U.S. forces from Boca prison in March, responded to Maliki remarks “he will do every­thing in his power to pre­vent the Baath Party from return­ing to power”, by telling Al-Sumaria TV the following:

Grad­u­ally, Baathists will return to power dur­ing the next eight years and they will have more than forty seats in the next par­lia­ment, if the Amer­i­cans and those who came with the Amer­i­cans accepted or not.

There will be no one spe­cific list for the Baathists in the elec­tion, they will par­tic­i­pate in dif­fer­ent non-sectarian par­ties and blocs that stand against the Iran­ian expan­sion agenda in Iraq and the most impor­tant they are involved with the Amer­i­cans in the inva­sion of the coun­try and top­pling the for­mer regime.

Maliki will never find a sin­gle per­son raises a ban­ner says “I am a Baathist” in Par­lia­ment, but he will feel them every day.

Al-Qaisi even gave us some num­bers and figures:

There are at least 103 Baathists from vary­ing ranks and degrees are prepar­ing to par­tic­i­pate in the elec­tions in Anbar province alone and there are twice as many in the rest of the provinces. They have much bet­ter chances to win the elec­tion against the the reli­gious par­ties that have emerged after the U.S. inva­sion of the country.

Opin­ions on the Baathists who will par­tic­i­pate in the com­ing elec­tions varies, Saleh al-Mutlaq said that they are 1 mil­lion votes, Iraqi polit­i­cal ana­lyst Mohamed Haroun says they are about three mil­lion votes, while, Ahmad Abu Risha, head of the Iraqi Awak­en­ing este­m­ated the num­ber up to six mil­lion votes, includ­ing Baathists and mem­bers of their fam­i­lies and their supporters.

Whether a true antic­i­pa­tion or not, the truth is some­thing between, the fig­ure remains high and the weight will be in some degree influential.

Baathists, will be the next elec­tion sur­prise. No one expects that the elec­tion will lead to the return of the Baath party to the polit­i­cal stage as one orga­nized polit­i­cal party, But the Baathists as indi­vid­u­als will be there, and will present them­selves to the voters.

Related link

Ba’ath Party and the elec­tion – 1

Will con­tin­ues with part — 3