Opposition? what opposition? the
incredible shrinking iraqiya party
niqash | Mustafa Habib | Baghdad | 08.11.2012
Election posters from 2010
show pictures (right) of Ayed Allawi, leader of the beleaguered Iraqiya party.
Since it lost the race to power in 2010, major opposition
bloc Iraqiya has been shrinking, with defections and internal dissent. Now two
leading members want to team with Iraqiya’s enemy, State of Law, for elections
in 2013.
Once it was the biggest alliance in the Iraqi Parliament – larger
even than the political alliance that currently runs the country. But over the
past two years the Iraqiya list has shrunk; and it seems to be becoming smaller
and smaller by the day.
After the 2010 elections, the Iraqiya list, which is made up of
several different political parties, had won just under a quarter of the votes
cast and 91 seats in the Iraqi parliament.
But these days it seems unlikely that the Iraqiya list, riven by
infighting and crippled by break away parties, will ever do as well as they did
back then. Even Iraqiya’s official website seems paralysed – it hasn’t been
updated since the beginning of the year and pundits suggest this is because the
four major leaders within Iraqiya all have different opinions and cannot publish
a unified agenda.
Iraqiya says it is a secular political party but it is true that it
is mostly made up of Sunni Muslims – even though its leader, Ayed Allawi is a
secular Shiite Muslim. The bloc is made of four main groups, which first joined
forces to compete in the 2010 elections: these are the Wifaq party (or the Iraqi
National Accord) led by Ayed Allawi, the Renewal party (or Tajdeed) founded by
now-fugitive politician Tariq al-Hashimi, the Iraqiyoun party headed by Osama
al-Nujaifi, who’s also the speaker of Parliament and the National Movement for
Development and Reform, most often known as the al-Hal, or Solution, party.
Altogether these parties won a majority of seats after the 2010
elections but they were not able to form a majority coalition before al-Maliki,
head of Iraqiya’s major opposition, the State of Law bloc.
Al-Maliki managed to persuade 159 MPs into his
Shiite-Muslim-majority bloc and became Prime Minister. The Iraqiya list – whose
head, Allawi, had been Prime Minister previously – disagreed with that move and
it took months of negotiations before a new government was finally able to be
sworn in, in November 2010.
The negotiations concluded with various power sharing agreements but
none of that stopped the wrangling – in part, because some aspects of the power
sharing agreements were not implemented. And those ongoing conflicts between the
State of Law bloc and Iraqiya have had negative consequences for the latter. In
particularly, it has seen the Iraqiya bloc split and members depart. Those
departures continue to this day.
The Iraqiya bloc has a lot of problem,” one MP who left, Jama
al-Batikh, told NIQASH. “It’s dominated by a handful of leaders while thousands
of party members are left on the sidelines, their opinions ignored. The Iraqiya
list really has no clear ideology or policies,” complained al-Batikh, who now
heads a breakaway group called White Iraqiya. “It opposes the government – yet
at the same time, it participates. It makes no sense.”
Al-Batikh was one of the first group of MPs to quit the Iraqiya bloc
in March 2011. Eight MPs said they were not happy with the way in which certain
Iraqiya members monopolised power at the top and they named their new group
White Iraqiya – it’s now mostly known as the White party and is headed by MP
Hassan al-Alawi.
Then in April, there were more defections with another five MPs
leaving Iraqiya to form a new party they called Free Iraqiya.
And meanwhile groups like the one led by al-Hashemi – the country’s
Vice-President who was sentenced to death after being accused of terrorism and
who remains in hiding outside of Iraq – have been split by opinions on what to
do about their former leader. Some have supported al-Hashemi and others have
not.
In fact some observers speculate that the Iraqiya bloc’s internal
crisis has been caused by the idealistic way in which Allawi has managed the
party ever since the crisis around the formation of the government in 2010. In
comparison, observers say that al-Maliki has behaved in a more non-partisan and
practical way.
All of these issues have seen Allawi’s leadership undermined. And at
the same time, Iraqiya’s major opposition party – the State of Law bloc led by
al-Maliki – has welcomed the defectors. The defectors have tended to vote with
whomever they support on any particular issue – this has included voting against
Iraqiya-supported efforts to remove al-Maliki from power.
“These days Allawi certainly doesn’t represent all of Iraqiya,” a
leading member of the State of Law bloc, Mohammed Sayhoud, suggested to NIQASH.
“In fact, he is the cause of most of the defections and splits.”
It is true that within the party, there are also still divisions
–particularly among some of the leading members. This includes Osama al-Nujaifi
and one of Iraq’s three deputy prime ministers, Saleh al-Mutlaq, who heads
another of the parties that make up the Iraqiya bloc. “They may not always agree
with decisions made by Allawi but they have opted to remain with the bloc,”
Sayhoud noted.
In fact, some observers say that al-Nujaifi has become the “real”
leader of the Iraqiya bloc behind the scenes. At first al-Nujaifi had supported
the attempts to oust al-Maliki from power – the Iraqiya bloc was staunchly
behind those attempts as were other blocs, including ones from inside the State
of Law bloc (which indicates the Iraqiya bloc is not alone in battling internal
divisions).
Al-Mutlaq was also behind the challengers, accusing al-Maliki of
having dictatorial qualities and even leaving his job as Deputy Prime
Minister.
However more recently both al-Nujaifi and al-Mutlaq appear to have
reconciled with al-Maliki with al-Nujaifi seen to hold three meetings with
al-Maliki in as many weeks and al-Mutlaq returning to his deputy duties.
Al-Maliki withdrew his request to Parliament to have al-Mutlaq fired.
As all this has gone on, neither al-Nujaifi nor al-Mutlaq have
chosen to leave the Iraqiya bloc. Although it would be clear to both of them
that Iraqiya bloc leader Allawi wouldn’t be all that pleased with their
increasingly close ties to al-Maliki. Some would say that Allawi considers
al-Maliki his worst enemy and that he even blames al-Maliki for making rifts
within Iraqiya worse.
And while Allawi has never expressed too much concern about the
White Iraqiya and Free Iraqiya parties splitting off, the fact that two of his
bloc’s most senior members appear to be negotiating with the opposition must
cause him some worries – especially because this is happening in the run up to
Iraq’s next provincial elections, slated to happen early next year.
For example, only a few days ago one leading MP from the State of
Law bloc, Sami al-Askari, mentioned that his coalition was discussing the
prospect of forming an alliance with al-Mutlaq and al-Nujaifi in preparation for
the elections planned for April 2103.
Despite all this though, many other members of Iraqiya are standing
strong. “The attempts by some blocs to cause rifts in the Iraqiya List will not
succeed,” Itab al-Douri, a member of the Iraqiya bloc who was once considered a
potential Minister of Defence, told NIQASH. Loyal Iraqiya members like al-Douri
insist that the bloc will contest the provincial elections together, vigorously
and with enthusiasm.
