May 24, 2010More Candidates Disqualified in Iraq
BAGHDAD — Only days after Iraq resolved a dispute over disqualifying candidates on the grounds they were once loyal to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, two more candidates face new challenges that could bar them from Parliament, election officials and party leaders said on Monday.
The new challenges — plus appeals by two candidates who lost their seats in a partial recount completed last week — added still more obstacles to the already prolonged and intensely disputed certification of the results of Iraq’s election, held more than two and half months ago.
While critics of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki were quick to accuse him of new efforts to gain advantage in his quest to remain in office, the circumstances appeared to reflect the chaotic, convoluted and at times comically absurd bureaucracy in Iraq.
The new challenges threatened to delay even further efforts to form a new government, which had seemed to gain momentum last week after the resolution of the murky process of ousting winning candidates for ties to the Baath Party. It did not appear that the latest developments would alter the preliminary results of the vote, which have remained more or less the same despite the flurry of legal challenges and political disputes since Election Day. March 7.
Even so, it was not clear why the latest efforts to disqualify newly elected lawmakers came at what seemed to be the 11th hour of the certification process. ( "D'oh! ...can you say Irak?)One of two candidates, Furat Muhsin Said, faces disqualification on the grounds that he continues to serve as a major general in Iraq’s Army, which is forbidden by Iraqi election law. The Ministry of Defense had objected to his candidacy before the election, but then reversed itself, saying that he no longer served in uniform.
General Said, in an interview, said he had personally offered his resignation to the defense minister, but he did not apparently do so formally, according to election officials.
He won a seat on the election list of a predominantly Shiite bloc, the Iraqi National Alliance, which has now allied with Mr. Maliki but is objecting to his return for a second term as prime minister. The latest challenge to his candidacy came from Office of the Commander in Chief under Mr. Maliki.
“It’s not actually a perfect system,” said one official familiar with the general’s service record, trying to explain why it only became an issue now, nearly three months after the election. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The other candidate facing disqualification, Abdulla Hassan Rashid al-Jibouri, belongs to the electoral coalition of Mr. Maliki’s main rival, Ayad Allawi and received the highest number of votes in Diyala province.
Mr. Allawi’s coalition, Iraqiya, narrowly defeated Mr. Maliki’s alliance, 91 seats to 89, making each seat potentially important in negotiations to cobble together a governing coalition in the new 325-member parliament.
The Ministry of the Interior recently informed the election commission that Mr. Jibouri should be disqualified from the new Parliament because he had a criminal record, an election commissioner, Sardar Abdul Karim, said.
Mr. Jibouri, a dentist, previously served as the region’s governor before fleeing Iraq in 2005. He returned in 2009 and was elected to the region’s legislature before running for Parliament this year. One of Mr. Jibouri’s aides, Rasim Ismail, said he was convicted in absentia on changes of fraud from his time as governor. After the election, Mr. Jibouri again left the country and is now in London, Mr. Ismail said.
Mr. Maliki’s critics have previously accused him of targeting political opponents in Diyala, a province bitterly divided among Sunni and Shiite Muslims and Kurds. The second highest vote-getter in Diyala and another member of Mr. Allawi’s coalition, Najim Abdulla Ahmed, was arrested in February and won a seat in Parliament anyway. One of Iraqiya’s national leaders, Osama al-Najafi, expressed disbelief as much as anger that the disqualifications continued, months after candidates first registered to run. “If this is true, it will be so strange, especially coming at this time,” he said.
Having finished the recount of ballots in Baghdad and the dispute over candidates suspected of Baathist backgrounds or loyalties, the election commission last week submitted a final list of winners to Iraq’s highest court, the Supreme Federal Court, for certification. That was expected to happen as soon as this week.
Officials said it would now be up to the court to consider the disqualifications, and how to replace them. It also has to now review appeals by two candidates whose initial victories were overturned after the recount of ballots in Baghdad and its surrounding province. They are Maysoun al-Damalouji from Iraqiya and a running mate of Mr. Maliki’s State of Law coalition, Jabbar Habeeb.
The recount replaced both with members from their own coalitions, leaving the overall outcome between the parties unchanged and the ultimate resolution of the electoral impasse as muddled as ever.
