More than 6,100 candidates have officially launched their campaigns in Iraq (عربي) for spots in the country's 325-seat parliament.
The campaigning so far excludes Salah al-Mutlak and Dhafer al-Ani, two well-known Sunni members of the Iraqiyya coalition. Ali Faysal al-Lami, the head of the Justice and Accountability Commission, announced last night they they're banned from the March 7 election because of their alleged links to the Ba'ath party.
Michael Hanna has a wonderfully detailed post up at Democracy Arsenal with the latest on the Iraqi de-Ba'athification crisis, some of which we covered in our last post on the subject, most of which we haven't. Hanna's post is a pretty definitive summary of where things stand right now.
I would add one item that broke after Hanna "went to press": The Justice and Accountability Commission announced (عربي) that most of the 177 de-Ba'athified candidates who appealed their bans did not file their appeals properly. So only 37 candidates will be allowed to contest their bans.
Iraq's "four presidencies" -- Jalal Talabani (the president), Nouri al-Maliki (the prime minister), Ayad al-Sammaraie (the parliament speaker) and Midhat al-Mahmud (the head of the judiciary) -- convened for a meeting yesterday. Details of the meeting are scarce, but the group agreed to overturn last week's appeals court decision which overturned the de-Ba'athification decision.
I'm a little unclear on what legal authority they're exercising -- but then this whole sorry de-Ba'athification affair has operated in a legal gray area.
Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, isn't happy about yesterday's court decision allowing hundreds of banned candidates to run in the March 7 parliamentary election.
A spokesman for Maliki, Ali al-Dabbagh, said the appellate court's decision is illegal and unconstitutional, and that the law "must be applied as it is." Maliki said the decision is not binding -- a position also adopted by Ali Faysal al-Lami, the chairman of the Justice and Accountability Commission -- and called yesterday for an emergency session of parliament to review the candidates.
Update, 10:58 a.m.: Al-Jazeera has some more detail about the decision, as does Marc Lynch.
It's worth noting that Iraqi president Jalal Talabani played a key role in pushing this crisis towards a political solution.
Update, 10:23 a.m.: Just to clarify, the bit about post-election review wasn't in the Al-Rafidayn story I linked; it is, however, in several other sources, including Al-Arabiya (عربي) and the BBC Arabic service (عربي). Everyone's quoting Hamidiyya Husseini, a spokeswoman for the Independent High Electoral Commission. Rough translation from Reuters:
U.S. vice president Joe Biden met today in Washington with Iraqi vice president Tariq al-Hashimi. We've copied the readout from the White House after the jump -- note that it's very short, and that it doesn't explicitly mention the de-Ba'athification crisis, only the need for "transparent elections." (The latter is a reference to the former, of course.)
Ahmed Abu Risha, a prominent sheikh in Anbar province and a key figure in the Sunni Awakening movement, is threatening to call for a Sunni boycott in the March parliamentary election.
"They will not care about the election, they will ignore it, maybe, if these decisions stand," Abu Risha said in an interview this week at his sprawling compound just outside Ramadi, about 70 miles (115 kilometers) west of Baghdad. "I will make my decision later about encouraging people to go to vote or not," he added.
Sheikh Kadhom al-Tai'e, a Sunni tribal leader in southern Iraq -- who pointedly refused to join the Awakening movement in 2007 (عربي) -- has also threatened a boycott.
Ali Faysal al-Lami, doing his best Oprah impression, has decided to hand out even more electoral bans (عربي). The list of prohibited candidates is now up to 766 names, up from 499 earlier this month; 95 of the banned candidates have appealed their cases to the seven-man court that reviews the de-Ba'athification decisions.
In an interview with Al-Hayat, Lami was asked about several possible solutions to the growing electoral crisis in Baghdad. He ruled out postponing any decisions until parliament has a chance to appoint the new seven-man de-Ba'athification board.
A few items on the de-Ba'athification front. 59 of the 511 banned candidates have been reinstated by a special appellate court (عربي); the list does not include any big-name candidates.
Some of the still-banned candidates -- including Salah al-Mutlak -- plan to press their case in front of other appellate courts. They're trying to invalidate the entire de-Ba'athification process as unconstitutional, rather than challenging their individual status (which is what the 59 candidates reinstated today did).
Iyad Allawi, the former Iraqi prime minister and the leader of the Iraqiyya coalition, said today in an interview that he thinks the de-Ba'athification process is illegal. But Ali Faysal al-Lami -- the head of the Justice and Accountability Commission, which made the decisions -- told The Washington Times' Eli Lake that he stands by his decision.
Iraqi newspapers are generally dismissive of Biden's trip to Iraq: Many accuse him of meddling, and few expect any concrete results from his visit. They do have some interesting details about his meetings with Iraqi leaders, though. Biden met today with the entire Iraqi presidency council, which was unexpected: The White House said last night that Biden would not meet Shi'ite vice president Adil Abdul Mehdi, because the two men talked in Washington last week.
But they did end up meeting -- and Mehdi, just back from a trip to Tehran, briefed Biden (عربي) on the Iranian position on Iraq's electoral crisis.
News reports don't explain exactly (عربي) what the Iranian position is, but you can probably guess: Remember, many Iraqis accuse Iran -- acting through Ahmed Chalabi -- of orchestrating the de-Ba'athification decisions.
As we reported yesterday, U.S. vice president Joe Biden is in Baghdad meeting with Iraqi officials. Two posts this morning on his visit: First, an assessment of the trip from Biden's national security adviser, Antony Blinken; second, reactions from Iraqi media, which have been pretty brutal.
Biden had dinner last night with Christopher Hill, the U.S. ambassador in Iraq, and Gen. Ray Odierno, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. He'll hold individual meetings today with Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, parliament speaker Ayad al-Sammaraie, and president Jalal Talabani; and then a larger meeting of lower-level officials, including deputy prime ministers Rafi al-Issawi and Roush Shaways.
Iraqi president Jalal Talabani has ordered a high-level commission to investigate the Justice and Accountability Commission's decision to ban 511 candidates from the March election.
"I myself am not satisfied with the banning decision," said Talabani, a Kurd who heads the three-member presidential council. "We have sent a letter to the Supreme Appeal Court asking whether this committee that issued the decision is legitimate or not."
Talabani's announcement comes 24 hours after Iraqi vice president Tariq al-Hashimi declared the ban illegal. The two men met yesterday at Talabani's home to discuss the decision; neither has released details of the meeting, but it's clear they decided to fight the ban.
The recent de-Ba'athification decisions made by Ali Faysal al-Lami's Justice and Accountability Commission are illegal, according to Iraqi vice president Tariq al-Hashimi (maybe he's been reading Reidar Visser's blog?).
Ayad al-Sammaraie, the Iraqi parliament speaker, has rejected Joe Biden's proposal (عربي) to delay the recent de-Ba'athification decisions until after the March 7 parliamentary election.
"Parliament is not interested in any proposal submitted by vice president Joe Biden," said Omar al-Mashhadani, Sammaraie's press secretary. "The parliament does not receive instructions from the Americans."
U.S. embassy officials have met regularly with Iraqi politicians, according to local media reports, but it doesn't seem like Iraq's key players -- Sammaraie, prime minister Nouri al-Maliki -- are interested in their offers of compromise. Ali al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for Maliki, told Al-Sharq Al-Awsat yesterday that U.S. "intervention" would not be helpful (عربي).
Kenneth Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon are worried, as are we, about the Iraqi electoral commission's (possibly illegal) decision to bar nearly 500 candidates from the March 7 election. The three-day window for appeals closes tomorrow, at which point the commission will release a final list of banned candidates (عربي).
What should be done? Pollack and O'Hanlon think it's time for Obama to start working the long-distance lines to Baghdad.
Reidar Visser makes an important discovery: Ali Faysal al-Lami, the head of Iraq's Justice and Accountability Commission -- which last week banned nearly 500 candidates from Iraq's March parliamentary election -- is himself a candidate in that election.
Lami is running as part of the Iraqi National Alliance, the coalition led by Iraq's two largest Shi'ite parties: the Sadrist movement and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.
In other words: The man who controls the "vetting process for the entire election," as Visser puts it, is himself running for office. Not really a shining moment for Iraq's young democracy.
For those of you who are really, really interested in this subject, Al-Jazeera English's Inside Iraq program did a half-hour show this weekend on the constitutional crisis. It features three Iraqi MPs: Mustafa al-Hiti, Adnan Pachachi, and Abdul-Hadi al-Hassani. Video's after the jump.
Remember yesterday, when a spokesman for Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) said newly-banned parliamentary candidates have three days to appeal the commission's decision?
That might be difficult. Reidar Visser says the appellate court only came into existence earlier this week. The names of the judges haven't been publicly released yet -- but the Iraqi newspaper Al-Manarah reports this morning (عربي) reports that three of them haven't been confirmed because parliament accuses them of having ties to the Ba'ath Party.
In other words, MPs want the de-Ba'athification commission to ban three judges from the appellate court that oversees the commission's decisions.
Salah al-Mutlak, the newly-banned Iraqi politician -- more on this in a moment -- has a lengthy interview today (عربي) in Sot al-Iraq (Voice of Iraq). A few of the highlights are translated after the jump.
The Iraqi de-Baathification commission wants to ban Salah al-Mutlak, a popular Sunni politician and a member of the Iraqiyya coalition, from running in the March election.
The recommendation from the Justice and Accountability Commission -- which is not binding -- was announced yesterday by Ali Faysal al-Lami, the head of the commission. His ruling would bar Mutlak and his party over their past support for Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party. The recommendation now heads to Iraq's high electoral commission (IHEC) for a final decision, which should be announced on Saturday.
Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki just issued a statement (عربي) on today's Baghdad bombings. It blames them, predictably, on "remnants of the Ba'ath and al-Qaeda and their collaborators."
Maliki also explicitly links the timing of the attacks to Monday's passage of a new election law.
The timing of these cowardly terrorist attacks... after the success of parliament in overcoming the last obstacle to the election, shows that the enemies of Iraq and its people aim to create chaos in the country and derail any political progress and disrupt the elections.
The statement is very similar to past statements issued by Maliki after big bombings. My understanding is that many Iraqis agree with Maliki about who's responsible -- but that doesn't mean they're not also losing confidence in the security forces.
Relatedly: The Guardian has an interesting report of an alleged meeting between Ali Mdouk, the head of Syria's intelligence service, and a number of Ba'athist figures.
