Word: allawi
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...disruptive figure in the heart of any new government. He scuttled a plan that would have replaced Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari--who is widely distrusted by Sunnis--with the more acceptable Adil Abdul Mahdi, and his refusal to deal with secular politicians like former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has confounded U.S. attempts to nudge the Shi'ites to form a national unity government. "We did our best to bring [al-Sadr] into the political process," says Redha Jawad Taqi, a senior leader of SCIRI, the largest Shi'ite party. "But [the Sadrists] believe wrong things about democracy...
...score. As the race to be Iraq's prime minister rounds the final bend, the leaders are exactly the same group that jockeyed for the post after the first post-Saddam election: the incumbent, Ibrahim al-Jafaari; Iran's preferred candidate, Adil Abdul-Mahdi; current American favorite Iyad Allawi; and, the darkest of dark horses, one-time Pentagon favorite Ahmed Chalabi. Asked to handicap the race last January, a leading Iraqi political scientist was reminded of a bumper sticker from an old U.S. Presidential campaign: ?Thank God,? said Wamid Nadhmi, ?that only one of them will become prime minister...
...Allawi, Washington's idea of a secular alternative to Jafaari and Mahdi, is not exactly an inspiring figure, either. During his brief spell as Prime Minister last year, he showed little capacity for administration and no political vision beyond his own survival. He failed even to rally like-minded secular parties. Despite the liberal use of state resources during the election of campaign, he was soundly defeated last January; his vote base doesn't seem to have grown in the recent election, either...
...only one of the four with even less credibility than Allawi is Chalabi. While claiming to be a secular politician, he went into last January's election as a member of the Shi'ite coalition, as an ally of the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. This time around, he contested the election on his own-and appears to have failed to win a single seat outright. The elections proved what most journalists have suspected all along: that Chalabi is one of Iraq's most despised political figures. Only in the surreal world of Iraqi politics would such a man even...
...deployed international commission finish certifying election results, it's becoming clear that the biggest losers are Iraq's moderates. "There is almost no one in the middle," says an Iraqi official, citing how the seats seem to be going to sectarian extremists on both sides. Former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's secular Shi'ite party hasn't so far got the number it was expecting. And according to the preliminary results, the secular list of Shi'ite Ahmad Chalabi, one of Washington's favorite lobbyists for the war to overthrow Saddam, didn't get enough votes for one seat...