Watching Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki on the campaign track one gets the impression that the election is a forgone conclusion. Al Maliki’s desire to win a third term in government is somehow visible in his swagger and the confidence he projects in his public appearances. However, despite all the power he consolidated in his past eight years in office, the security and political realities are, this time, different.
Throughout the election campaign, the security challenges had been weighing down on the authorities in more ways than one. Candidates, rallies, political bureaus and election centres have come under attack in various cities. Militant groups, some of which are unquestionably Sunni, are making their presence felt in an intensified but tactical manner that would make it easy to shake the average Iraqi’s faith in Al Maliki’s leadership. Even in Shiite popular circles, it is not unusual these days to hear whispers that maybe the time has come to give someone else a chance.
Moqtada Al Sadr, the leader of the Shiite Sadrist movement, who was until recently an Al Maliki ally, makes no apology for saying in public what other Shiites say behind closed doors. Before he turned against Al Maliki and accused him of presiding over a corrupt system, Al Sadr was instrumental in providing the government the majority it desperately needed so it could survive a number of confidence votes.
The Syrian Impact
Gruesome images of beheadings and other atrocities committed in Syria by armed Sunni groups affiliated with Al Qaida, such as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil) and Jabhat Al Nusrah, are pushing to the fore a new radicalisation phenomenon targeting Iraqi youth in particular. The Shiite group Assaeb Ahl Al Haq, one of the newest blocs competing for the Shiite vote in this election, has turned its Syria campaign into an electioneering tool. A rally it organised a few days ago, east of Baghdad, proudly displayed posters of tens of their “martyrs” killed in military action in Syria.
Such radicalisation is likely to trickle up to the political elite level, especially when this elite is as fragile as it appears to be. In the Anbar province, where the government has been battling radical Sunni groups with a majority Shiite army for months, there is no sign of the fighting subsiding. Tough rhetoric from the central government and repeated deadlines set by the PM for these groups to lay down their weapons and leave the area have not changed the situation. Reports from the cities of Fallujah, Hadeetha and Karma put the number of casualties among the Iraqi armed forces in the high hundreds. Local journalists tell the BBC of tens of bodies belonging to soldiers left to rot away in army barracks while waiting for clearance from the Anbar operations commander to hand them over to their families. In the meantime, grieving families in the south and other Shiite provinces often complain about the lack of information about their missing sons and they hold the military leadership (Al Maliki is himself Minister for Defence and Supreme Leader of the Armed Forces) responsible.
The Shiite Battleground
The signpost to watch for in this election is the result of the battle for the south. Previous national elections show that it was Basra in particular that tipped the balance in favour of Al Maliki as far as the Shiite vote was concerned. But in the last provincial and local elections in April 2013, although Al Maliki’s Daawa party claimed the largest number of seats, the Sadrists and the Islamic Supreme Council in Iraq (ISCI) coalition won more seats together and subsequently dominated a number of governorates. Recently, we have started to hear a different tone coming from the south. Religious speeches during political rallies are making a point of emphasising the theme of change. This is music to Al Maliki opponents’ ears as they read in these calls an indication of their revived appetite for change at the top of government led by Al Maliki.
Alliances and horse trading
In 2010, it took 86 days for the election results to be certified. It is in the interest of all concerned that this process gets completed in a much shorter time after this election, given the high stakes at play in Iraq. In addition to the deteriorating security situation and political uncertainty, we are likely to see a long-drawn process of a series of painstaking negotiations and a difficult summer.
Unlike previous parliamentary elections, the Big Four (two Shiite, one Sunni and one Kurdish) blocs have disintegrated in the lead-up to the 2014 elections. We have witnessed the birth of a number of smaller political groups on either side of the political and sectarian divide. This could work in favour of Al Maliki, but may very well work against him especially if his State of Law seats in parliament fall below the 80-seat benchmark. Even with more than 80 seats in 2010, it took him nine months to stitch together an alliance that would not have been possible without the support of ISCI and the Sadrists. Those two influential groups, allies of yesteryears, have turned foes in recent times, have already started to work openly on their political alignment somewhere else.
Al Maliki has once again shown his masterful skills as a pragmatic operator and a political survivor. A little while ago, the media made a meal of his alleged intentions to impose a state of emergency. He was criticised for the wrong timing of such proposal in parliament and accused of aiming to throw the elections off course. Yet, he delivered the elections on time, because it was important to show Iraq’s foreign friends, including the US and Iran, that whatever was left of a democratic process had to stay on track despite all the challenges.
The Kurdish leaders, pragmatic as they have always shown themselves to be, watch and wait. In the absence of the ailing president Jalal Talabani, whose term in office is up anyway, Al Maliki knows that he can no longer rely on a Kurdish lifeline. But as Iraq’s Foreign Minister, Hoshiar Zibari, told me in a BBC interview, consensus around a new president is a prime condition to achieve consensus on the new prime minister. Could this be Al Maliki’s rabbit out of a hat?
Nahed Abouzeid is BBC Arabic Senior Correspondent in Baghdad.
