Iraqis are due to go to the polls on 30 January to elect a 275-member National Assembly. The assembly will then select a new prime minister, a president and will draw up the new Iraqi constitution. According to figures available from the Independent Election Commission up to 285 electoral lists have been fielded by political groups and independent figures. The number of candidates on each list ranges from between 70 as in the case of Adnan Pachachi's Independent Iraqi Alliance, and the 275 maximum set by the Higher Elections Committee. Al-Ahram Weekly publishes some of the most prominent electoral lists The National Accord List (Al-Wifaq Al-Watani): This list is headed by Iraqi interim Premiere Iyad Allawi while most of the candidates belong to the National Accord Party, Allawi's own party. In his platform, as in most TV commercial of which Iraqi premiere has become a star, Allawi vows to "re-establish peace and security" and promises Iraqis of improving their living conditions, establish a strong and professional army and a capable police force. "We believe that the time has come for Iraqis who have suffered from oppression and injustice for many years to rise anew and reclaim their rightful place among the nations," the platform stated. Going through the propaganda material of Allawi's electoral campaign, one could not escape the fact that the manifesto lacks any reference to the existence of the multi- national occupation forces and therefore, any demands of a timeline for the troops withdrawal disappeared from the list of promises Allawi was making. According to the list platform. The candidates' goal would be to work towards strengthening national unity and to draw a line between "criminals of the former regime" and those who were forced into "terrorist activities". The platform strongly condemns the injustices of the past and rejects any discrimination on the basis of political affiliation, doctrine, sect or ethnicity. Such statement completely ignores the fact that Allawi himself was the very part of a system of rule placed in post-Saddam Iraq which helped exacerbate ethnic and sectarian divides rather than mutate them. Allawi's candidates go on to add that they will invest oil revenue to provide jobs and the public services that Iraq desperately needs, in addition to future investment in science and technology. The candidates also want to rid Iraq of the financial and administrative corruption afflicting its "patient citizens". Ironically, Iraqi voters are well aware that the financial corruption is the fruit of a policy that has been adopted by Allawi and his ministers, some who appear on the Iraqi list leaving little hope that if elected, the Iraqi list will bring about real change. Meanwhile, Allawi's posters continue to mushroom across the streets of Baghdad bearing the slogan "A strong leadership... A secure nation". Unified Iraqi Alliance (Al-I'telaf Al-Iraqi Al-Muwahad): The top candidate on this list is Abdul-Aziz Al- Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). This list has received much media hype and has been promoted as the list which has the blessing of Iraq's most revered Shia authority Ayatollah Ali Al- Sistani, a claim which Sistani did not confirm or deny. The list supporters had Sistani's photograph on their electoral posters in an attempt to entice those voters who are devout followers of Iraq's grand Ayatollah. It is also known as the "Shia list" because among the candidates are some of the top Shia political figures including Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and Ibrahim Al-Jaafari, Iraqi vice-president and head of Al-Daawa Party and Adel-Abdul-Mahdi, the current Iraqi finance minister who is nominated to take over Allawi as Iraq's next prime minister. The list was announced following a meeting between Sistani and the forementioned figures. But the list also includes Sunni, Turkoman as well as Kurdish figures in a gesture to dispel the notion that it is purely Shia-oriented. Al-Hakim calls for reserving seats for Sunnis and granting them ministerial and leadership positions. According to their electoral campaign, the Unified Iraqi Alliance's goals revolve around establishing security, an Iraqi constitution, independence, democracy, human rights, employment and development. The candidates seek a timetable for the withdrawal of the multi-national forces from Iraq, a united, federal, democratic and constitutional Iraq with Islam as its official religion, respect for human rights without discrimination on sectarian, religious or nationalist grounds, an independent judiciary that upholds the principles of justice and equality. Last week, Al-Hakim announced that his party was ready to deploy 100,000 members of the Badr Brigade militia, the paramilitary wing of the SCIRI, to protect balloting. But there are also accusations filed by Allawi and the Constitutional Royal Movement against Al-Hakim's list for using religious symbols in their electoral campaign which is not permissible, according to an agreement reached by the different political parties. News reports also spoke of a campaign of intimidation carried out by members of the Badr Brigade to force voters in southern parts of Iraq to vote for Al-Hakim's list. Vote-buying is also the order of the day in some of those areas. There are growing fears that if Al-Hakim's list was to achieve a landslide victory, an Iranian-backed regime would rule Baghdad. The list is known for its close ties with the Iranians given that most of the candidates spent their exiled years in Tehran. A central point in this list is perhaps its special reference to women, with candidates calling for the participation of women in political, economic and social life. This is a point in favour of the list, as the thought of religious figures and parties running for office caused great alarm amongst Iraqi women. The Independent Democrats Coalition: The Iraqi veteran diplomat Adnan Pachachi heads the list with a slogan "united democratic Iraq". The list is made up of 52 candidates some of whom are highly respected figures from across Iraq's sectarian and ethnic divide. Candidates include the Iraqi Environment Minister Meshkat Mu'mun, Mahdi Al-Hafez, Iraq's planning minister as well as the well-known Iraqi singer Hussein Nima, who is running in Al-Nasiriya, a very important constituency in southern Iraq. On top of their agenda is the restoration of security and the rule of law, bringing an end to the foreign occupation (the list points out that the American occupation is maintained with British support), forging a national consensus, creating job opportunities for the unemployed, supporting civil society institutions and giving effective support to the contribution of women to society. Pachachi has been one of the staunch supporters that elections be delayed to allow for the Iraqi forces to participate. He headed a meeting last month with some other 17 political groupings in which he called for a six-month delay of the polls. Until now, Pachachi will participate in the elections. He, however, said that his participation remains a last minute decision, which indicates he might pull out any time. "Now, the fall of the dictatorship provides an opportunity to establish a pluralistic democratic system beholden to the desires of the Iraqi people, and to protect society against the rise of a new dictatorship," said the coalition statement. Perhaps one of the central issues at the IDC's agenda is to emphasis the territorial integrity of Iraq and to stand in the face of any attempts to divide the country. It, nonetheless, believes that federalism could be a model that will ensure plurality within a unified Iraq and to strengthen solidarity between Arabs and Kurds. Reporting from Baghdad by Nermeen Al-Mufti
