Con­cen­trat­ing on the last minute agree­ment between the Sadrists and “State of Law” (which is a tac­tic used by all coali­tions to advance their nego­ti­a­tions sta­tus), the media failed to report the “white coup” took place inside the Iraqi National Alliance “INA”, which is much more impor­tant of any coali­tion announcement.

The direct inter­ven­tion by the supreme reli­gious author­ity in Najaf, as well as the Iran­ian pres­sure, advised the Shi­ites coali­tions not to stick to their already known can­di­dates. The result was the exclu­sion of both Supreme Council’s can­di­date (Adel Abd Al-Mehdi) and the Sadrists can­di­date (Ibrahim Al-Ja’afri), after an emer­gency meet­ing held between INA members.

The meet­ing wit­nessed words exchange between the Sadrists and the Supreme Coun­cil, each side accused the other of betray­ing their INA coali­tion. The Supreme Coun­cil accused the Sadrists with hold­ing an agree­ment with Maliki’s “State of Law” behind INA’s back, while the Sadrists denied these “media rumors”, accused the Supreme Coun­cil of fail­ing to take a clear stand against Maliki as the Sadrists did.

The idea to choose new can­di­dates could be accept­able to all par­ties, includ­ing the Amer­i­cans who seek to ensure their inter­ests in Iraq after the with­drawal. Accord­ing to the replace­ment scheme, the can­di­dates are:

- For­mer oil min­is­ter Ibrahim Bahr Al-Ulum.

- Qasim Dawood, an inde­pen­dent mem­ber of the National Coali­tion, who is a very inter­est­ing choice, named as an alter­na­tive can­di­date or a com­peti­tor to Maliki, even though he was not able to get a par­lia­men­tary seat for his con­stituency in Karbala.

Seen as the straw that will break Maliki’s back, this “white coup” is an attempt to force the Prime Min­is­ter to offer more con­ces­sions to the Sadrists to receive their sup­port in the Can­di­dates Nom­i­na­tion Com­mit­tee (the so called “wise men”). At the same time, it could be a polit­i­cal maneu­ver intended to keep Maliki alone in the com­pe­ti­tion arena, since Dawood and Bahr al-Ulum are not really strong con­tenders to Maliki’s nom­i­na­tion, com­pared to the polit­i­cal weight of Abdul Abd Al-Mehdi and Ibrahim Al-Jaafari.

I will write about the back­ground of Muq­tada Al-Sadr’s (and later Allawi) visit to Syria and what’s exactly going on in the com­ing days (if have the time and the mood).