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BAGHDAD - An estimated 1,300 delegates from across
Iraq were to vote on Wednesday for a new interim
legislature, one day after hundreds of protestors
accused the main political parties of hijacking the
process.
Fuad Maasum, head of the national conference’s
preparatory committee, announced that two competing
lists, drawn up according to preset criteria, would
be voted by a ballot system.
“Today will be a decisive day,” said Baghdad-based
cleric Sheikh Hussein al-Sadr, hailing the imminent
election of the national council, which will advise
the caretaker government as it maps out the path to
elections scheduled for January.
The vote had been due to take place Tuesday, but was
delayed after some 450 delegates accused the main
political parties of hijacking the process and
complained about having to vote on closed lists.
Maasum insisted that the system of lists was the
ideal way to maintain “balance and accord” and,
after a show of hands, declared his preferred method
had won the day and asked delegates to show up
Wednesday morning for the vote.
But by mid-afternoon, delegates were still tucking
into their lunches, and voting seemed a long way
off.
Nineteen of the 100 seats on the council have
already been handed to members of the defunct
Governing Council, created by the US-led occupation
shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and
including many former exiles.
According to conference rules, delegates of
different leanings -- religious or secular, Kurd or
Arab -- are supposed to draw up lists for the
remaining 81 seats and submit them to an open vote.
“We refuse this and if this is not dealt with today
then the whole conference will fall apart and I will
walk out, with hundreds with me,” Aziz al-Yasseri,
leader of an independent coalition and nominated for
the council, said Tuesday.
He said the champions of the list system included
the two mainstream Shiite religious factions -- the
Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq
and the Dawa party -- as well as the communists, the
two main Kurdish former rebel groups and the prime
minister’s Iraqi National Accord.
Yasseri accused them of hooking up with
“fly-by-night political parties” and pressuring
independents and representatives of civil
organisations to join them on their lists.
Women have also voiced concern that they would get
just half of the 25 seats allocated to them under
the interim constitution adopted before the US-led
occupation was formally wrapped up.
“If women do not get the 25 percent in the council
then let the conference fail,” said Sangool Chapook,
who is herself guaranteed a seat as a former
Governing Council member.
Ismail Zayer, editor of the leading Baghdad daily
Al-Sabah al-Jadid, who has formed a coalition of
independents, alleged that the big political parties
were “dividing the cake amongst themselves”.
They said “we need a parliament working in harmony
with the government. We don’t like that. We would
like a government under the control of parliament,
and not the other way round,” he said.
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