Baghdad: Iraq's Shiite parties held emotional demonstrations yesterday and vowed to purge loyalists of Saddam Hussain's outlawed Baath party as tensions over a list of candidates banned from a March election soared.
The orchestrated protests by hundreds of people came ahead of a debate in parliament over an appeal panel's decision to suspend a ban of almost 500 candidates accused of Baathist ties until after the March 7 election.
Iraqi MPs plan to meet on Monday to debate the decision to allow candidates linked to Baath party to compete in the elections.
The Shiite-led government's heated reaction and calls for a campaign against Baathists could lead to a dangerously explosive witchhunt that might reopen sectarian wounds between once dominant Sunnis and the Shiite majority just as violence fades.
Fear of a Baathist revival might benefit Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki and other Shiite leaders, as it could win back voters who might otherwise back cross-confessional, secular alliances, like former prime minister Ayad Alawi's.
"We should not stand here with our hands tied during this sensitive period. We should take revenge for our martyrs, prisoners, the displaced and the homeless left by the former regime," Baghdad provincial governor Salah Abdul Razzaq, a senior member of Al Maliki's Dawa party, told protesters.
"We will not allow the mass graves to return," he said, adding that the Baath party "and its instruments Al Qaida" were behind recent bomb attacks that have killed dozens of Iraqis in Baghdad and in the city of Karbala.
"We will de-Baathify the Baghdad administration," he added.
Local government leaders in Basra affiliated with Dawa and the other main Shiite blocs, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (ISCI) and anti-American cleric Moqtada Al Sadr's movement, made similar vows at a rally to purge the city of Baath sympathisers.
