Vote seen as pivotal test for Iraq, Maliki – paper

BAGHDAD /Iraqi News The New York Times newspaper said on Monday that the coming parliamentary elections as a pivotal test for the democracy in Iraq and the popularity of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. “A few months ago, building on genuine if not universal popularity, Nouri al-Maliki, appeared poised to win a second term as Iraq’s prime minister. Now, as Iraqis prepare to vote in parliamentary elections on March 7, his path to another four years in office has become increasingly uncertain, his campaign erratic and, to some, deeply troubling,” the newspaper said. Far from consolidating power in the authoritarian manner that has plagued Iraq’s history, Maliki risks losing it through the ballot box. In a region where the traditional exit from power has been “the coup or the coffin,” as one Western diplomat here put it recently, the election has become a crucial test of Iraq’s post-invasion democracy, and of  al-Maliki’s own fate. The newspaper wonders how he wins — or perhaps more significantly, how he loses — will more than anything else determine the country’s course in the coming years as President Obama carries out his promise to withdraw all American troops. Even his own supporters acknowledge that Maliki now appears isolated, imperious and impetuous, his re-election prospects hurt by events out of his control and by others of his own making. “I told him the other day, ‘You don’t have positions. You have reactions,’ ” said Izzat Shabander, an independent Shiite lawmaker who joined the prime minister’s electoral coalition and sounded as if he were having second thoughts. “Maliki, who turns 60 in June, could yet prevail. According to politicians and polls conducted by parties and American officials, though not released publicly, Maliki’s coalition will very likely win the largest plurality of the new Parliament’s 325 seats. But it is unlikely to be anywhere near a majority,” the newspaper said. “To retain his post, he will have to cobble together a postelection coalition among parties whose leaders seem able to unite only in the desire to elect a new leader.” The question was not whether they would win but by how much,” said Kenneth M. Pollack, director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, referring to the confidence he heard in discussions here last year with Maliki’s aides. “At this point, they’re fighting for their lives.” “Al-Maliki, an outwardly dour man with a jowly face darkened by a perpetual shadow of a beard, makes a simple case for re-election. He has repeated it over and over during his campaign,” the New York Times said. “Today’s Iraq, dear brothers, is not the Iraq of 2005 or 2006” was how he put it at one rally in Baghdad, referring to the horrific sectarian bloodshed that very nearly devoured the country. It is both a boast of what his government has accomplished (with American help he rarely acknowledges) and a warning of what could return (when the Americans leave). “Maliki is neither a charismatic leader nor a polished campaigner, but in a country convulsed by chaos and carnage, his message and achievements have resonance, even among his critics.” “I consider him the savior of the country,” said Samira Ali, 56, a teacher from Basra, where Maliki ordered a military operation in 2008 that drove out the Shiite militias that once ran rampant across southern Iraq and in Baghdad itself. “Initially viewed as a malleable sectarian figure when he emerged as a compromise candidate for prime minister after Iraq’s last parliamentary elections in 2005, al-Maliki has since demonstrated a willingness to act forcefully in the name of Iraqi nationalism and unity, even against those of his own Shiite sect.” His refashioned his party, Dawa, into a coalition he called State of Law, with a campaign that promised security and order, and played down his party’s Shiite religio