Iraqi presidency seeks court decision on Baath ban

Friday, January 22, 2010

Waleed Ibrahim
Reuters

BAGHDAD: Iraq’s presidency council has asked a court to rule on the legitimacy of a panel that banned scores of candidates from the March election because of links to Saddam Hussein’s Baath party, the president said on Thursday.

President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, played down the significance of the move by a Shiite-led independent committee, saying the resulting furor, including alarm among minority Sunnis who dominated Iraq under Saddam, was overblown.

“It is not a major political crisis … it will not be. It is a little bit exaggerated,” Talabani said.

Angry fallout among Sunnis had threatened to reopen sectarian wounds just as the slaughter between Sunnis and Shiites triggered by the 3002 US invasion begins to recede.

US officials have lobbied for a resolution, perhaps fearing that plans for US troops to end combat operations in August ahead of a full withdrawal by end-2011 could be derailed. Vice President Joe Biden was expected to visit, Talabani said.

The Justice and Accountability Commission, a body that replaced a “de-Baathification” committee established by US administrators after the invasion to root out Saddam loyalists, has barred 115 candidates from the March 7 parliamentary vote.

The list included prominent Sunni leader Saleh al-Mutlaq, generating widespread protests from Sunnis that Iraq’s majority Shiites were trying to sideline them. Two thirds of those on the list when it was filtered out on Wednesday turned out to be Shiite, potentially defusing the row.

“We have asked our brother Medhat al-Mahmoud [head of the Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council] whether the commission called justice and accountability really exists. As we know, parliament has not voted it into existence yet,” Talabani said.

The March 7 election is a pivotal moment for Iraq as it emerges from all-out war. The country has also started to seal multibillion-dollar deals with global oil firms that could catapult it into the big leagues of oil producers and give it the billions it needs to rebuild. That could be threatened by growing instability.

The panel that banned the candidates is staffed by former members of the US-created de-Baathification committee because Parliament has failed to agree on their replacements.

Its leaders are associated with an electoral alliance led by the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, a powerful Shiite political movement that was formed in Iran.

Analysts say the composition of the list of banned candidates suggests it could be aimed at reducing the electoral threat posed by secular groups to the Islamist parties that have dominated Iraq since the invasion, and not at Sunnis.

The Baath party under Saddam ruled Iraq with an iron fist for more than two decades, brutally repressing any opposition from Shiites and Kurds. Many Iraqis, whether Sunni or Shiite, joined because it was the only way to get a good job.

At a news conference, Iyad Jamal al-Deen, a secular Shiite who wears religious clothing and heads the small Ahrar coalition of Shiite and Sunni parties, said 20 of his 200 candidates were on the list and called the ban an attempt at “disenfranchisement and marginalization.”

“The measures of the Justice and Accountability committee should be halted,” Deen said, adding, “The US has to intervene to rectify the course of the democratic process in Iraq.”

In heavily Shi’ite southern Iraq on Thursday, crowds hundreds strong demonstrated to call for the full implementation of laws banning the Baath party. Iraqi elections officials barred another 57 candidates from the vote; not for Baathist ties, but because of misrepresentations in their educational qualifications.

Source: The Daily Star.
Link: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=110961.