Al-Hakim becomes President
As AFP notes, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim has just become the president of the Interim Governing Council. Nine members are taking turns rotating into the role for a one-month term, based on alphabetical order. Al-Hakim is the first Shiite ayatollah to rise to such a high office in modern Iraq. He serves at a difficult time when the IGC must find a compromise between Sunni and Shiite interests in the way elections are conducted. His Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq is a leading Shiite party, but I don’t personally think it is all that big in Iraq. I suspect al-Da`wa and even the Sadr Movement are larger numerically.