Anti-American cleric al-Sadr calls for Iraqi referendum on who will be prime minister

Anti-US cleric calls for Iraq referendum on PM

BAGHDAD — An anti-American Shiite cleric called Tuesday for a referendum on who will be Iraq’s prime minister, a proposal that was nearly certain to fail but which added more turmoil to an already tense and uncertain postelection period.

The firebrand cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, who leads a Shiite religious party that won 39 seats in the March 7 parliamentary election will likely be a kingmaker in the effort to form a governing coalition.

His call for a referendum was made in a statement on his Web site and delivered from Iran, where he has been living while pursuing clerical studies.

A referendum would run counter to Iraq’s constitution, under which the president chooses a premier-designate from the largest bloc in parliament to come up with a government within 30 days. The lawmakers subsequently vote on the Cabinet, which needs a simple majority approval.

Al-Sadr’s precise intentions were unclear, beyond perhaps an effort to play to popular support as frustrations grow among Iraqis with the prospect of weeks and perhaps months of political haggling and uncertainty before any new government can be cobbled together.

“The people should decide who the next prime minister should be,” said an aide to al-Sadr, who recently visited him in Iran, where the cleric held talks about forming a new government. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks.

The call comes as the current prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is challenging the top vote-getter’s right to form the next government and possibly assume the top job.

Former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite who was heavily backed by Sunnis, came out narrowly ahead of al-Maliki, with his bloc winning 91 of parliament’s 325 seats. That gave Allawi just a two-seat edge.

Al-Maliki has called for a recount of votes and also for several elected candidates from Allawi’s list to be disqualified for alleged ties to Saddam Hussein’s regime.

A close aide to al-Maliki, Haidar al-Abadi, dismissed the cleric’s referendum idea.

“Any political entity has the right to voice his views and opinions, but the constitution is very clear, our system is a parliamentary and not a presidential one,” al-Abadi told Iraqi state TV. “Thus, the parliament is the one to choose the premier.”

Because no single group came close to the 163-seat majority to rule alone, an alliance of several groups will have to be forged. This makes the Sadrists, whose now-disbanded Mahdi Army militia was blamed for much of the sectarian killings in 2006 and 2007, significant to any future government.

The other potential kingmaker is the Kurdish Alliance of parties from the country’s semiautonomous northern region, which can bring 43 seats to the negotiating table.

Al-Sadr proposed that five candidates be listed on referendum ballots, including al-Maliki and Allawi, as well as his own aide and negotiator, Jaafar Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr.

The other two would be Ibrahim Al-Jaafari, al-Maliki’s predecessor as prime minister who brought the Sadrists into the government and gave them several Cabinet posts, and Adel Abdul-Mahdi, a Shiite vice president and a stalwart of the Iranian-backed Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council party.

Al-Sadr’s proposal is that a sixth slot on the referendum be left blank, for people to offer their own candidates, his aide said.