In Iraq's Provincial Elections, Main Issue Is Maliki Himself

By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, January 17, 2009

BAGHDAD -- The stern face of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki glares out from campaign posters plastered across Iraq these days.

He is not on any ballot in the provincial elections scheduled for Jan. 31. But in agreeing to be the public image of the Coalition of the State of Law, a group of candidates running primarily on his record, Maliki has effectively turned the contest into a referendum on his rule.

The elections will be the most crucial test so far of Maliki's attempt to bolster the central government's authority -- and his own. If he succeeds in establishing a nationwide base of local politicians ready to support him and the idea of centralized government, Maliki will have cemented his three-year transformation from little-known lawmaker to the most powerful Iraqi statesman since Saddam Hussein.

Despite the history of his Dawa party as a Shiite political movement opposed to secular governments, Maliki and his State of Law coalition have avoided overt religious messages in favor of populist promises to improve security and basic services such as water and electricity.

His growing popularity has threatened the authority of his longtime allies, including Kurds and fellow Shiites, as has the growing perception that he is becoming a strongman. Critics fear that he will expand his political strength in the coming elections.

"We got rid of the dictator and nightmare Saddam Hussein only to get this new dictator wearing the uniform of democracy," said Waleed Salih Sherka, a parliament member with the Kurdish bloc.

But interviews with more than 100 Iraqis across the country showed broad support for Maliki, in many cases because of the strong-arm tactics that trouble his allies. Shiites said they backed him, but so did many Sunnis, who increasingly see him as a nonsectarian leader. He has built that reputation over the past year by launching military offensives against the militia of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, once an ally, and by making bellicose threats against the Kurds, a key part of his governing coalition.

When asked about the provincial elections, Yasser Ali, a 31-year-old Shiite who said he did not support Maliki when he became prime minister, let out a string of expletives directed at politicians.

"All of them should go to hell!" he shouted while sticking skewers into chunks of meat on a crowded street in Baghdad's upscale Karrada neighborhood.

But the kebab cook had no such words for the prime minister. "No, no, no -- al-Maliki is good. He is a beautiful flower. But no one is helping al-Maliki. He is the only one working for all Iraqis, while the others are working for their private interests."

Ali said he plans to vote for the State of Law coalition, which he referred to as Maliki's list, even though he has no idea who the candidates on it are. "You see, we are new to politics here. No one knows all the details," Ali said. "But we know one thing: Maliki is a good, brave man who has helped us."

'Iraqist,' Not Islamist

Salah Abdel Razaq, national campaign manager of the State of Law coalition, said he has had a simple election strategy: It's all about Maliki.

"We are Maliki's candidates," said Abdel Razaq, who is a candidate himself for the Baghdad provincial council. "We want to embody Maliki's aims in the provinces."

He said the coalition, which includes half a dozen small parties in addition to Dawa, is campaigning on promises to increase the centralization of authority and to extract resources from the federal government through their connections to Maliki.

Maliki, the head of the Dawa party, has yet to attend political events for the coalition, but he has been involved in major decisions about the campaign.

The prime minister decided about three months ago that the coalition should be called State of Law, an allusion to the formal name of the Baghdad security plan, known in Arabic as Imposing the Law, Abdel Razaq said. Since Maliki and U.S. officials launched the operation in 2006, violence in the capital has dropped dramatically.

But Maliki was initially reluctant to allow his picture to be used on campaign posters, in part because of a concern that it would be an abuse of his position for political purposes, according to Muhsin al-Rubaie, a deputy campaign manager.

The campaign eventually got permission from the independent election commission to use his image, Rubaie said, and nearly every other slate of candidates has put up posters featuring prominent political figures. But aides to Maliki said his hesitation reflects a tendency to avoid self-aggrandizement.

"He totally rejects this idea of showing himself off," said Rubaie, who served as Maliki's office manager when he was in parliament. "We were at a meeting recently where a sheik got up and started effusively praising the prime minister. He made me go up and pass a note to the sheik telling him to stop it."

Aides universally describe Maliki, 58, as a modest, unassuming man. He is rarely seen in anything but his trademark dark, frumpy suits, clunky glasses and five o'clock shadow. Even as a parliament member, Maliki often boiled his own tea and cleaned his office, Rubaie said.

Yet Maliki's personal life is still an enigma to most of the public. He rarely consents to interviews and did not agree to one for this article.

Born in a small village in southern Iraq, Maliki received a master's degree in Arabic literature and quickly joined Dawa, which was founded in 1957 as a Shiite opposition movement. It advocated a democratic government overseen by clerics who would ensure that its laws were compatible with Islam.

After Saddam Hussein's Sunni-led, largely secular government banned Dawa, Maliki fled the country and lived in exile for two decades, first in Iran and then in Syria, where he was the head of the party's local office. He was known there as Jawad, which means generous in Arabic, though he dropped the nickname after he became prime minister.

Aides said even some of his closest allies did not know that, when he was in exile in Syria, Maliki adopted the daughter of a woman who died in childbirth, because her father was too poor to support her. Along with Zainab, who is now about 12 years old, Maliki and his wife also have four biological children, three daughters and a son, aides said.

Abdel Razaq, the campaign manager, said the party is no longer focused on religion. "Maliki is Islamic as a person, but as a statesman? No, he is secular," he said. "Right now we have priorities. People have no houses, no food, no security. There are essential needs for people before you do things like ban alcohol or force women to cover their heads with scarves."

"Maliki is first of all Iraqist," he said. "He cannot be an Islamist now."

An Undercurrent of Opposition

The shift of Dawa away from a call for religious rule to the day-to-day needs of citizens is a pragmatic approach echoed by ruling movements in Islamic countries across the Middle East.

Analysts and lawmakers said the transition reflects a positive development in Iraq's political system. In the last election, in 2005, many voters heeded the political recommendations of such religious figures as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country's most revered Shiite figure, whose endorsement of a grand Shiite coalition propelled it to victory. Now Sistani has refrained from making endorsements while coalitions formerly based on sect or ethnicity splinter into blocs based on political parties and personalities.

The posters that used to bear Sistani's image have been replaced by those with politicians such as Maliki and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, whose list of candidates is perhaps the greatest threat to Maliki's coalition in this election.

"As an Eastern society, we are used to having symbols, and we must have a symbol to vote for," Abdel Razaq said. "But now those people are politicians, not ayatollahs."

Ghassan R. al-Attiyah, a political analyst and director of the Iraq Foundation for Development and Democracy, a secular organization, said it was unclear why Maliki had stopped speaking of religion.

"Al-Maliki clearly wants to stay in power -- anyone who has climbed up the ladder of power does not want to climb down," Attiyah said. "So he has to adapt and change. But we still don't know the most important question: Is al-Maliki sincere in wearing the mantle of reform instead of Islam?"

Attiyah said Maliki could be considered the winner in the elections even if the coalition captures only two provinces; Dawa currently controls the province of Karbala. Campaign aides said they believed the coalition could also win a majority of seats in Baghdad, Najaf, Basra and Dhi Qar provinces.

But the coalition will also have to overcome an undercurrent of opposition that views Maliki as overreaching his authority.

At least 142 lawmakers, four more than necessary, would support pushing Maliki out of office through a no-confidence vote, according to a senior U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. But he and leading lawmakers from across the political spectrum said such a vote was unlikely at this point because there was no clear alternative and it could plunge the country into chaos.

Throughout the country, Maliki is far from universally beloved. Sadrists blame him for military campaigns against them. The Kurds see him as trying to take away rights and land that should be part of their region. And others criticize him for creating so-called support councils, armed groups whose stated goal is to increase security, in provinces across the country.

"Establishment of the support councils was a preplanned step with the objective to turn these councils into a striking force for the Dawa party," said Mukhalad Ali, 47, a private teacher of English in Najaf.

The candidates from the State of Law coalition, however, clearly believe their association with him will help them prevail in the election. During a gathering of about 80 women in Najaf who met to observe the holy month of Muharram, coalition volunteers and a female candidate tried to win their support.

A woman in a black abaya stood up and mentioned Maliki's name more than eight times in two minutes. "Right now we have to thank God for the government of Nouri al-Maliki," said the woman, who would give only her first name, Nada. "We have so much that we didn't have before."

As the women nodded, the candidate stood up. "My sisters, my name is Jinan al-Baghdadi, and I am on the al-Maliki list!" she proclaimed, before speaking about her concern for women's issues. Then she sat down, and the women began to pray and weep in observance of Muharram.

Earlier, Baghdadi had explained why there wasn't a need to speak much.

"I am on the al-Maliki list, and everyone in Iraq loves al-Maliki," she said. "What else is there to say?"

Correspondent Anthony Shadid and special correspondents Zaid Sabah, Qais Mizher, Aziz Alwan and Dalya Hassan in Baghdad, Dlovan Brwari in Mosul, Aahad Ali in Basra, Saad Sarhan in Najaf, and Washington Post staff in Tamim, Diyala and Anbar provinces contributed to this report.