Iraq Sunni politician to appeal electoral ban that analysts say may endanger March polls

Iraq Sunni leader will appeal March election ban

BAGHDAD — Hopes of persuading Iraq’s minority Sunnis to take part in the March election were dealt a blow Friday after a prominent Sunni politician said he’d been barred from the polls because of alleged ties to Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Legislator Saleh al-Mutlaq said he planned to appeal the decision by a committee and warned its ruling would stoke sectarian tensions ahead of the Mar. 7 vote.

The decision by many Sunnis to boycott the 2005 polls froze them out of the Shiite-dominated government and drove many into the arms of al-Qaida. It was a key cause of the two years of violence that followed.

The decision to ban al-Mutlaq from the March polls raises many questions. There were no specifics about what al-Mutlaq was alleged to have done, or how the decision would affect other members of his party. It is also not clear under Iraq’s nascent political process whether the committee has the final decision or whether al-Mutlaq could yet see his name on the ballot.

But if the ban did go forward, Joost Hiltermann, an Iraq analyst at the International Crisis Group, a think tank, warned it could alienate Sunni voters and undermine elders and militia leaders who turned on al-Qaida and cooperated with the Shiite-led government. The movement is known as the Awakening Councils or Sons of Iraq and is considered a crucial reason for the drop in violence.

“This is a terrible move,” Hiltermann said. “The Awakening Councils came up in part because they had been promised they could rejoin the political process.”

“The elections are for Sunnis the make-or-break event for their participation in the state of Iraq,” he said.

Persuading the Sunnis to participate in politics has been a key strategy of American officials hoping to strengthen government institutions before the gradual drawdown of U.S. troops to 50,000 by next August. Al-Mutlaq is an influential figure: He won 11 out of 275 seats in the 2005 parliamentary polls, the second-largest bloc of Sunni seats.

The executive director of the Accountability and Justice Committee, Ali Faysal Allami, said Thursday al-Mutlaq was disqualified from running in March because he had promoted Saddam’s Baath Party. The party is now banned in Iraq and the committee vets candidates for ties to the former regime.

Committee members and officials from the country’s Independent High Electoral Commission, which oversees the voting, did not respond to repeated requests for comment on Friday. Haydar al-Mulla, a representative for al-Mutlaq’s Iraqi Front for National Dialogue party, said the decision applied only to al-Mutlaq and not the party.

“De-baathification,” or firing high-ranking members of Saddam’s former regime, was a key plank in American strategy following the 2003 invasion. Recently, however, the Iraqi government has backtracked somewhat, saying it is willing to work with some former Baath party members in the interests of unifying the fractured country.

But Iraqi politics remain heavily influenced by sectarianism. Al-Mutlaq says the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as well as other prominent Shiite political groups are merely pawns of neighboring Shiite-majority Iran. The accusations are designed to appeal to voters in his power base of Sunni-dominated Anbar province.

While violence in Anbar has dropped dramatically since the dark days of the insurgency, a recent string of attacks raises concerns over a refueled insurgency. A double suicide bombing last week killed 24 and seriously wounded the governor.

Al-Mutlaq, who referred to the committee as the “accountability but not justice” committee, said he was barred because of his party’s popularity.

“There is a big possibility that they will be the biggest bloc in the parliament, so they want to weaken it before the election,” he said. He later said security forces had prevented his supporters from holding protest rallies in many cities in Iraq on Friday.

“The mood of the people is very bad,” he said.

But in the ever-shifting world of Iraqi politics, some Sunni voters questioned whether the decision would even stand.

“They have done a good thing to al-Mutlaq’s list because his list will get more votes after this move,” said Khalid Ibrahim, 45, who lives in a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad.

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Associated Press writers Bushra Juhi and Saad Abdul-Kadir in Baghdad and Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Portland, Oregon contributed to this report.