Maliki looking for an alternative plan … if there is any

After about a week since Allawi vis­ited the Supreme Shi’ite cleric Al-Sistani in Najaf, Maliki payed the the high­est reli­gious author­ity a visit in his res­i­dence in the old city, but his visit has noth­ing to do with Allawi.

Maliki’s visit comes a day after a harsh attack from Sistani’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Kar­bala “Ahmad Al-Safi” on the polit­i­cal blocs and the Iraqi gov­ern­ment accus­ing them of delay­ing the for­ma­tion of the gov­ern­ment pre­fer­ring to main­tain their per­sonal interests.

But per­haps the most impor­tant devel­op­ment on the Sadrists front is what the Sadrists rep­re­sen­ta­tive announced in Kufa mosque in “Fri­day– cer­e­mony” say­ing that the renewal of Maliki’s term for the sec­ond time is a big defeat for the Sadrist movement.

Although it is not expected that Maliki in his press con­fer­ence fol­low­ing the meet­ing will reveal the out­come of the meet­ing with Sis­tani, and his state­ment is a typ­i­cal state­ment made by every Iraqi offi­cial met with Sis­tani say­ing that the Supreme Cleric stands an equal dis­tance from all the coali­tion. But on the basis of the last days devel­op­ments, Maliki will show to Sis­tani the real rea­sons for the delay in form­ing a gov­ern­ment, explained to him the dif­fer­ences with Moq­tada Al-Sadr.

Maliki stressed in his press con­fer­ence that he is the sole can­di­date for the Prime Min­is­ter office, despite the rumors cir­cu­lat­ing around say­ing that Dawa Party is dis­cussing one of these two plans:

- Replac­ing Maliki with another can­di­date (which is already denied by Maliki).

- Look­ing for new allies (which is already said in Maliki’s inter­view on WaPo).

Maliki is con­vinced that the leader of the Islamic Supreme Coun­cil Ammar al-Hakim is not wait­ing for the suc­cess of the nego­ti­a­tions with the “State of Law”. In real­ity, Al-Hakim’s inter­est right now is the fail­ure of the nego­ti­a­tions between Maliki’s coali­tion and the Sadrists, as any agree­ment between them is likely to win by either Maliki as Prime Min­is­ter through a deal with the Sadrists, or the Sadrists can­di­date for the job, Ibrahim Al-Jaafari. both ways will be at the expense of the Supreme Council’s can­di­dates Adel Abdul-Mahdi, and Baqir al-Zubaidi.

With this in mind, comes Al-Hakim’s con­stant calls to the round-table talks, as well as Al-Hakim’s con­tin­ues defense of Allawi, who may accept Adel Abdul Mahdi as prime min­is­ter in return for a high-ranked offi­cial post in the government.