Droves of Iraqi parties throw hats in the ring

At least 122 political organizations have registered to run in Iraq’s Jan. 30 elections, thrilling organizers but setting the stage for tough bargaining over the next eight days.

Many of the parties are expected to combine in loose coalitions as they seek to maximize their seats in a new national assembly. Such alliances must be declared to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) by the end of this month.

Even so, voters will face a bewildering array of choices. There are religious parties representing Shi’ite Muslim, Sunni Muslim and Christian voters; secular parties with religious affiliations or regional interests; parties organized around sheiks and clerics; and parties devoted simply to justice, democracy or equal rights.

“We have so many parties, so many people wanting to participate,” said Farid Ayar, a spokesman for the IEC. “It is wonderful. I am happy.”

The IEC announced Sunday that the elections will be held Jan. 30, and Prime Minister Iyad Allawi pledged yesterday they would proceed on schedule despite continuing violence in many parts of Iraq.

Gunmen yesterday assassinated Sheik Faidh Mohamed Amin al-Faidhi, a member of the influential Association of Muslim Scholars, which has called for a Sunni boycott of the elections in protest of this month’s U.S.-led assault on Fallujah.

There were fears that the slaying would further alienate Sunnis, who long ruled Iraq under Saddam Hussein but are unlikely to muster more than 20 percent of the vote on Jan. 30.

Several Arab states proposed yesterday at a conference in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, that the election be postponed for a few weeks while the Sunnis are persuaded to participate. But in the end, all are expected to sign on to a draft communique urging the Allawi government to hold the ballot on schedule.

“The forces of darkness and terrorism will not benefit from this democratic experience and will fight it,” Mr. Allawi told the Associated Press yesterday. “But we are determined that this experiment succeeds.”

The welter of competing parties and candidates, meanwhile, has made political forecasting virtually impossible.

A poll by the International Republican Institute in early October found no single party holding a positive image among most voters, and no one figure enjoying widespread political support.

Under rules drafted by the American occupation authority and the now-defunct Iraqi Governing Council, each party or coalition of parties will submit a list of candidates for a 275-seat assembly that will draft a new Iraqi constitution.

Voters will cast their ballots for one or another of these slates, with seats distributed proportionally; that is, if a party or coalition receives 25 percent of the votes, it gets 25 percent of the seats in the new legislature.

If a coalition were to win 30 seats, the seats would go to the top 30 candidates on the coalition list. That makes for hard bargaining within potential coalitions as candidates jockey to get their names as near as possible to the top of each list.

The most significant coalition-building appears to be going on under the protective cloak of the revered cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, who has been trying to unite all Shi’ite groups on a single slate to maximize their political power. But it is not clear that the effort will succeed.

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