February 20, 2010Sunni Bloc Boycotts Iraq Polls
Mutlak’s party said it was boycotting the elections over the ban and Iran’s interference.
BAGHDAD – A major Sunni bloc on Saturday, February 20, boycotted Iraq’s parliamentary elections next month over a controversial ban on hundreds of candidates and Iranian interference.
"The call is open for other political parties to take the same stand as our front,” he said.
An integrity and accountability committee upheld earlier this month a ban barring 480 candidates from contesting the March 7 elections on alleged links to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.
NDF leader Saleh al-Mutlak and Sunni stalwart Dhafer al-Ani were among those disqualified.
The controversial decision surprisingly reversed a judicial panel decision allowing the candidates to stand for the polls on condition that their cases be examined after the vote and those found to be Baathists would be eliminated.
Scores of Iraqi tribal leaders took to the streets on Saturday to demand allowing the candidates to run for the vote.
The controversial ban has cast a pall on the legitimacy of the March 7 ballot, amid fears that the ugly face of sectarian violence would roar again.
The boycott is reminiscent of the Sunni boycott of the 2005 elections, which fuelled a deadly violence in the country.
The vote, the second parliamentary ballot since the 2003-led US invasion, is seen as a test of reconciliation between the Sunnis who ruled under Saddam and the Shiites who came to power after his ouster.
Iran’s Role
The Sunni front, which was part of a cross-sectarian coalition, Iraqiya, headed by former Shiite prime minister Iyad Allawi, also blamed the boycott on Shiite Iran’s interference in the election, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"After the remarks of General Ray Odierno and (US ambassador to Baghdad) Christopher Hill that the Justice and Accountability Committee (JAC) was being run by Al-Quds forces (from Iran), the National Dialogue Front cannot continue in a political process run by a foreign agenda," said Mulla.
The JAC is run by former Shiite deputy prime minister Ahmed Chalabi and his close ally Ali Al-Allami, who spent a year in a US-run jail in Iraq.
While in Washington on Tuesday, General Odierno, the top US military officer in Iraq, said Chalabi and Allami had ties to the Quds force and "clearly are influenced by Iran."
"We have direct intelligence that tells us that," the commander told an audience at the Institute for the Study of War in the US capital.
Odierno said Chalabi and Allami have had several meetings in Iran with a close aide to the commander of the Quds, the covert operations arm of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards.
"And we believe they're absolutely involved in influencing the outcome of the election,” he said.
“And it's concerning that they've been able to do that over time," Odierno said, apparently referring to the Tehran regime.
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