Future of Iraq's non-sectarian bloc in doubt

30 Mar 2011 16:20

Source: reuters // Reuters


* Iraqiya won most votes in last year's election

* Eight parliament members have since quit

* Bloc is "losing its non-sectarian character"


By Waleed Ibrahim

BAGHDAD, March 30 (Reuters) - A decision by former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to refuse a post in Iraq's government has cast doubt over the future of his non-sectarian political bloc a year after it won the most seats in parliament.

Some analysts say Allawi is facing the fact his attempt to lever Iraq out of sectarian-based government is doomed to fail.

Allawi's Iraqiya is the only big political bloc in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq that enjoys support across sectarian and ethnic divides. It won 91 of parliament's 325 seats last year, but failed to build a coalition to unseat Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

When it became clear that Maliki, a Shi'ite from a party with religious roots, had cobbled together enough support to stay in power, Iraqiya agreed to join the governing coalition. Allawi was offered the post of head of a national advisory body, but this month he rejected it, saying it lacked real power.

Iraq's politicians are looking ahead to a June deadline set by Maliki last month after street protests, for members of his new cabinet to show results or be sacked. Only then will the final makeup of Iraq's government become clear.

Allawi's decision has left his bloc split, with some members enjoying the perks of power and others, like Allawi himself, seeming more comfortable in opposition. Eight Iraqiya lawmakers say they are leaving the group and other defections are expected.

Seven of the eight are Shi'ites. They complain the bloc is losing its non-sectarian character and becoming a vehicle for Sunnis, setting back its goal of bridging the divides in Iraq that fuelled eight years of war.

Allawi, who briefly ran Iraq under a U.S.-installed interim administration from 2004-05, is himself a Shi'ite. But the bloc earned much of its support from Sunnis who felt excluded from a government dominated by overtly Shi'ite and Kurdish groups.

Under the new coalition deal hammered out in December -- nine months after the election -- Iraqiya was mostly given posts reserved for Sunnis in the previous government. Most of those jobs went to figures who joined Iraqiya from Sunni factions.

"The bloc lost its secular character when it accepted joining the government on a sectarian basis, not secular," said Hassan al-Alawi, one of the Shi'ite lawmaker's who quit Iraqiya.

"Look at the top posts that were given to the bloc. They are the same as the ones given to the Sunni Accordance bloc in the election of 2005."


SETBACK

Allawi remains Iraqiya's leader for now, but he lacks the clout that would come from an official post such as that of Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq, a veteran Sunni politician who folded his National Dialogue Front into Iraqiya.

Allawi himself is often abroad, and critics see him as little engaged in the day-to-day wrangling of Iraqi politics.

The walkout by eight members has set Allawi's non-sectarian project back and shows his own role weakening, but does not necessarily hurt Iraqiya, said Yahya al-Kubaisy, an Amman-based researcher for the Iraqi Center For Strategic Studies.

"This withdrawal has weakened Allawi, rather than the Iraqiya bloc. Those lawmakers who withdrew are from Allawi's faction. In practical terms, Allawi is no longer the most powerful figure inside the bloc. He is still the head of it, but this only gives him moral authority inside the bloc," he said.

In a move that made political waves, Allawi travelled this month to Najaf to meet anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose decision to support Maliki for a second term proved decisive in last year's scramble to form a government.

Some Iraqiya lawmakers have suggested Allawi could seek to lure Sadr into opposition at the end of the prime minister's 100-day deadline and expected cabinet shakeup in June.

An alliance with Sadr, whose now-suspended Mehdi Army militia was one of the most feared forces at the height of sectarian fighting, hardly seems like a step forward for Allawi's dream of a non-sectarian basis for Iraqi politics.

Kubaisy said Allawi was simply coming up against reality.

"Maybe he is starting to realise that the Iraqi political scene is still governed on a sectarian basis. And any manoeuvre out of this basis will certainly fail." (Editing by Peter Graff and Douglas Hamilton)