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Sadrists organise referendum to name Iraq PM
31 March 2010 BAGHDAD - The movement loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, which has emerged as a kingmaker in the aftermath of elections, will organise a vote to see who its supporters want to be Iraq's next leader, it said Tuesday.Mookie looks to be the big power broker ... We will conduct a consultation on Friday to find out which candidate the people want... from five proposed candidates,' Ali al-Anbari, a spokesman for the radical Shiite cleric's bloc, told AFP. Among the five names that will be put forward are sitting Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his main rival, secular former premier Iyad Allawi. Allawi's Iraqiya bloc finished first in Iraq's March 7 parliamentary elections with 91 seats in the 325-member Council of Representatives, two more than Maliki's State of Law Alliance. The three other candidates that will be put forward are former prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, current Shiite Vice-President Adel Abdel Mahdi, and Jaafar al-Sadr, the son of Mohammed Baqr Sadr, an ayatollah assassinated by Saddam Hussein in 1980 who founded Maliki's Islamic Dawa Party. The Sadrist movement performed well in the elections, finishing at the head of the Iraqi National Alliance (INA), a coalition led by Shiite religious groups, which finished third nationwide with 70 seats. Its success has given it strong bargaining power as Iraq's various political groups negotiate to form a 163-seat coalition and thus form a government, a process that is expected to take several months. Posted by: Steve White 2010-03-31 |
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