Iraqi committee wants to bar 4 elected on winning list for ties to Saddam Hussein’s regime

Iraqi panel wants to bar 4 elected on winning list

BAGHDAD — A committee that vets candidates for ties to Saddam Hussein’s regime is recommending four people elected to parliament from the winning list of former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi be disqualified, an official on the committee said Monday. The challenge risks deepening Iraq’s sectarian tensions.

If the courts accept the recommendation, it could alter the outcome of the March 7 vote in which Allawi’s secular Shiite-Sunni coalition beat a bloc led by Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki by just two seats.

In particular, that could fuel feelings of disenfranchisement by Iraq’s minority Sunnis, many of whom backed Allawi’s list and believe the vetting committee is trying to rob them of a victory and tilt the election outcome back to the Shiite-led majority.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said Monday that the Justice and Accountability Committee found the four politicians have ties to Saddam’s Baath Party. He said the committee was also pushing for the disqualification of two other winning candidates, one from al-Maliki’s list and a Kurdish candidate. He would not identify them by name.

Allawi’s Iraqiya bloc rejected the step.

“The decisions of the Accountability and Justice Committee are not legal,” said Hamid al-Mutlaq, a winning candidate on the Iraqiya list. “Those six winning candidates have the approval of (the election commission) and this decision is a political one, not a legal one.”

Al-Mutlaq is the brother of another prominent Sunni politician, Saleh al-Mutlaq, who was one of about 450 candidates barred by the committee from running before the voting. Those barred included Shiites, but Sunnis feel the panel is primarily trying to block them from regaining a political voice they lost with Saddam’s overthrow.

The vetting panel, often referred to as the De-Baathification Committee, wanted another 52 candidates blacklisted just days before the voting, but the electoral commission allowed them to run. Out of that group, six candidates won seats.

A decision on whether they’ll be part of the legislature now rests with the courts, according to the vetting committee and the independent electoral commission.

What is not clear yet is whether a court ruling in favor of barring the candidates would ultimately change the distribution of seats and possibly deny Allawi’s bloc its slim victory and a shot at forming the next government.

One possibility is that instead the affected political coalitions would be allowed to keep their parliament seats and replace the disqualified candidates with other politicians from their lists.

Iraqi courts have already given al-Maliki one victory by siding with his argument that any party leader able to assemble a large enough parliamentary coalition could be chosen to form the new government, rather than just the coalition that won the most seats on March 7.

Because no single group won a majority, an alliance of several groups will have to be forged.

Ahmad Chalabi, the Shiite political leader whose faulty information about weapons of mass destruction was a key justification for the war, was one of the heads of the vetting committee and he won a seat in parliament. He said in an interview with The Associated Press Sunday that he did not think if the candidates were banned it would change the overall outcome.

“The fact is that they got the votes,” he said of the candidates.

The De-Baathification process started under the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority that ran the country after the 2003 invasion and was intended to root out Baathists from all levels of government.

The committee’s work has been all the more controversial because of its secretive nature. It has not disclosed specific reasons for why the hundreds of candidates were barred. The fact that two of the officials leading the effort were also running for office called into question its motives, critics say.

The U.S. has accused the committee of being influenced by neighboring Shiite power Iran.