re: iraq's election - tou4
You could be right - but I think the Iraqi National Alliance might get up....
They primarily represent the Shi'ite majority and were fashioned in consultation with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. They offer 228 candidates divided equally between representatives of major Shi'ite political parties and independent candidates who are mainly Shi'ite, but include Sunnis, Failis (Kurdish Shi'ites), Turkmen, and Yazdis (another Kurdish splinter group).
The political parties represented on the list are the Islamic Da'wa Party, headed by Ibrahim al-Ja'fari, interim Vice President of Iraq; the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), headed by Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, who also heads the national alliance list; and the Iraqi National Congress, headed by Dr. Ahmad Chalabi. A less significant party is Hizbullah, headed by Abd al-Karim al-Mahmadawi. A significant independent candidate on the list is Dr. Hussein Shahristani, who put the list together in consultation with Sistani. Shahristani, a former nuclear physicist who refused to be co-opted into Saddam's weapons program and was subsequently imprisoned, is considered a likely candidate to be the next prime minister of Iraq, a post he had turned down when it was offered to him by Ambassador Paul Bremer when the interim government was constituted. While the list represents a broad segment of the Iraqi society, there is little that it has offered in terms of its political program and how it might restore stability to the country. Noticed for his absence from the list is Muqtada al-Sadr, who has refused to offer his support for the National Alliance.
