Trio of Sistani-backed Shiites vying for premiership

[leftchick]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050213/wl_mideast_afp/iraqvotepm_050213090009&e=2

<snip>

Observers had predicted that if the 169 list backed by top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani obtained 50 percent of the votes, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi would lose all chances of clinging to his post.


Despite the power of incumbency and his backing in Washington, Allawi looks set to be outscored by the Kurdish ticket and can only realistically hope to clinch an important portfolio and become a leader of the opposition.


The two most visible of the political heavyweights on the Shiite list are Finance Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi and Dawa party leader Ibrahim Jaafari.


Abdel Mahdi is a leading member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq but his conciliatory rhetoric during the campaign and since the January 30 poll has led some observers to present him as the frontrunner in the premiersip race.

[rodeodance]

1. wonder if Allawi will take to handing our 100 bills again for support?

[leftchick]

2. I wonder if this mean we can stop paying for his mercs...

and helicopter rides around the country...



<snip>


In the meantime, Mr Allawi is running a high-profile political campaign. He enjoys the benefits of office in a US-appointed and US-guarded government, including US military Blackhawk helicopters to fly him out to brief public appearances. He has made repeated radio and television appearances and conveniently timed announcements like the capture of a key insurgent suspect.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1400516,00.html

[Jack Rabbit]

3. An alert about al-Madhi

From The Nation
Dated Thursday February 10

Getting the Purple Finger
By Naomi Klein

The election results are in: Iraqis voted overwhelmingly to throw out the US-installed government of Iyad Allawi, who refused to ask the United States to leave. A decisive majority voted for the United Iraqi Alliance; the second plank in the UIA platform calls for "a timetable for the withdrawal of the multinational forces from Iraq."

There are more single-digit messages embedded in the winning coalition's platform. Some highlights: "Adopting a social security system under which the state guarantees a job for every fit Iraqi...and offers facilities to citizens to build homes." The UIA also pledges "to write off Iraq's debts, cancel reparations and use the oil wealth for economic development projects." In short, Iraqis voted to repudiate the radical free-market policies imposed by former chief US envoy Paul Bremer and locked in by a recent agreement with the International Monetary Fund.

So will the people who got all choked up watching Iraqis flock to the polls support these democratically chosen demands? Please. "You don't set timetables," George W. Bush said four days after Iraqis voted for exactly that. Likewise, British Prime Minister Tony Blair called the elections "magnificent" but dismissed a firm timetable out of hand. The UIA's pledges to expand the public sector, keep the oil and drop the debt will likely suffer similar fates. At least if Adel Abd al-Mahdi gets his way--he's Iraq's finance minister and the man suddenly being touted as leader of Iraq's next government.

Al-Mahdi is the Bush Administration's Trojan horse in the UIA. (You didn't think they were going to put all their money on Allawi, did you?) In October he told a gathering of the American Enterprise Institute that he planned to "restructure and privatize state-owned enterprises," and in December he made another trip to Washington to unveil plans for a new oil law "very promising to the American investors." It was al-Mahdi himself who oversaw the signing of a flurry of deals with Shell, BP and ChevronTexaco in the weeks before the elections, and it is he who negotiated the recent austerity deal with the IMF. On troop withdrawal, al-Mahdi sounds nothing like his party's platform and instead appears to be channeling Dick Cheney on Fox News: "When the Americans go will depend on when our own forces are ready and on how the resistance responds after the elections." But on Sharia law, we are told, he is very close to the clerics.

Read more.