BAGHDAD - Official campaigning for Iraq's March 7 general election started on Friday in a tense atmosphere overshadowed by angry demands from provincial leaders that workers linked to Saddam Hussein be fired. Political party activists pasted up posters across Baghdad, adding to those that had been placed illegally at prominent billboard sites across the capital in recent weeks in an attempt to steal a march on election rivals. The run-up to the campaign has for weeks been dominated by the legacy of executed dictator Saddam and his Sunni Arab former elite which continues to loom large, almost seven years after he was ousted in a US-led invasion. A row over election candidates accused of vicarious ties to Saddam's outlawed Baath party has left the country's dominant Shiite majority anxious to extinguish every trace of his influence, fanning tension among Sunnis. An integrity and accountability committee announced late Thursday that 28 of 177 candidates banned from the vote for alleged Baathist links would be allowed to stand after all, a small proportion of more than 500 originally blacklisted. Two Sunni parliamentary stalwarts, Saleh al-Mutlaq and Dhafer al-Ani from the secular Iraqiya list of former prime minister Iyad Allawi, are among those who will remain barred. Allawi and fellow secular list leader Jawad Bolani, currently the war-torn country's interior minister, who are both trying to unseat Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shiite, were the worst affected by the ban. Around 19 million people have the right to vote, including 1.4 million Iraqi citizens now living abroad in 16 countries, according to election organisers. A total of 6,500 candidates will contest the ballot in an election that will feature 10,000 polling stations and 54,000 ballot boxes, according to Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC). The vote, the second parliamentary ballot since Saddam was toppled, is seen as a test of reconciliation between the Sunni minority dominant under Saddam and the Shiite majority represented by Maliki's government. A panel of judges had previously said that barred candidates could stand but that they would examine their files after the polls and would eliminate them if they were found to be Baathists, but this ruling was reversed. Tension between Shiites and Sunnis, however, was underscored by demands from political leaders in central and southern provinces that Baathists be purged from public office. The deputy governor of Babil province, a brigadier general in Saddam's army, has been told to stop work and been put on leave. "We decided to stop the work of the first deputy Eskander Wetwet, and give him a one month vacation, because he is included in the decisions of the ministers council to eliminate all officials who were active members in the Baath party," said Babil governor Salman al-Zargani. In Dhi Qar province, three high-ranking officers from the security forces have been sacked, a provincial council official said.
