Iraqi Court Overturns Ban on Hundreds of Candidates

Iraqi Court Overturns Ban on Hundreds of Candidates
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: February 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/world/middleeast/04baghdad.html?ref=global-home


BAGHDAD — Iraq once again stepped back from a political crisis of its own making when an appeals court on Wednesday temporarily overruled a controversial step to disqualify hundreds of candidates in next month’s election for having ties to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.

The initial effort to knock more than 500 candidates off the ballot — both Sunnis and Shiites, but mostly those viewed as rivals to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s bloc — created a political furor and prompted warnings from American and United Nations officials that the credibility of Iraq’s election was at stake.

The ruling by a panel of seven judges appeared at first glance to be an exercise of judicial independence in a still-young democracy. It followed weeks of behind-the-scenes negotiations and diplomacy, especially from the Obama administration, which dispatched Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the midst of the turmoil.

At the crisis turned to impasse, Iraqi, American and United Nations officials all looked to Iraq’s judiciary to resolve a crisis that its politicians could not. “This decision will strengthen the integrity of our judiciary,” said Aliyah Nasyif, a member of Parliament who was among those initially barred.

The court’s ruling averted a threatened election boycott by at least one prominent coalition most affected by the initial ban: Iraqiya, led by a former Shiite prime minister, Ayad Allawi. The coalition includes an array of Sunni and secular parties and is widely seen as the most formidable challenger to Mr. Maliki’s bloc and a second, largely Shiite alliance.

A Sunni boycott of Iraq’s first parliamentary election in 2005 fueled disenfranchisement and the insurgency itself, and American officials especially feared a repeat could in the worst case reignite violence even as tens of thousands American soldiers begin to withdraw this year.

“This is a great victory for democracy, for us, for Iraq,” Osama Nujaifi, a Sunni member of Parliament from Nineveh, said of the ruling in a telephone interview from Amman, Jordan, where he was traveling.

The court’s legal rationale for overturning the ban was not made public, but many lawmakers had questioned the murky process by which a committee with disputed authority, known as the Accountability and Justice Commission, was able to bar nearly one in six candidates based on evidence that has never been made public.

Even as it resolved the immediate crisis, only days before the official opening of a monthlong campaign ahead of the vote on March 7, the court also planted the seeds of a new one.

According to officials informed of the decision, the court ruled that it would reconsider the commission’s efforts to ban candidates after the vote. That raised the possibility of ousting newly elected members of Parliament should their ties with the now-banned Baath Party be established.

Iraqi law does not have a provision for unseating elected officials, however. An election official, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to criticize a court decision, warned that disqualifying anyone duly elected would violate popular will.

“The voters will be the only losers,” the official said.

For now, at least, the court’s ruling set the stage for a fierce campaign, returning to the ballot a number of prominent politicians seeking to tap into the seething discontent with Mr. Maliki’s government, and not only among Sunnis.

“We don’t want to blame the government, but the fact is it is negligence,” the speaker of Parliament, Ayad al-Sammarai, told tribal leaders on Wednesday in a pre-election critique that blamed Mr. Maliki for failing to provide security and jobs.

Some of those disqualified appeared to have only tenuous ties, if any, to the Baath Party, the only official political entity allowed under Mr. Hussein’s government and one that dominated social and economic life. The process for establishing those ties dates to the early months after the American invasion in 2003 when the party was banned after Mr. Hussein’s fall.

A revival of the Baath Party itself seems almost inconceivable now, but many of those challenging Mr. Maliki have appealed to Sunnis with sympathies to elements of the old regime, particular in the military and former government elite. Mr. Maliki himself has excoriated the Baath Party’s remnants in exile, accusing them of colluding with terrorist groups to carry out a series of devastating attacks since last August.

Many lawmakers accused the commission of settling scores on behalf of the Shiite-dominated parties, at the behest of Iran.

“The decision of the commission is a sword on my neck because of my opinions against Iran,” said Dhafir al-Ani, another Sunni who was disqualified.

Mr. Maliki himself made no immediate statement responding to the court’s decision.

Iraq remains so deeply divided that even establishing the rules for an election — which was supposed to happen in December and then in January — has been fraught for much of the last year, largely paralyzing the work of the Parliament. An election law stalled for months last year, only to passed, then vetoed, passed again and finally amended after another intense round of international intervention.

Reporting was contributed by Nada Bakri, Anthony Shadid, Omar al-Jaowshy and Zaid Thaker.