Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

Donate

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Email
  • RSS
  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2023 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Uncategorized

Uia Member Calls For Jaafari To Step

Juan Cole 04/01/2006

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email
0 Shares

UIA Member Calls for Jaafari to Step Down

A member of the United Iraqi Alliance called publicly Saturday for Ibrahim Jaafari to step down as candidate for prime minister from the coalition. The UIA groups at least 7 Shiite religious parties, and it is being alleged that 4 of them have lost faith in Jaafari.

But Jawad al-Maliki of the Dawa Party (to which Jaafari belongs) said that Jaafari will fight on to the bitter end.

Since Jaafari won the UIA nomination by only one vote, the coalition has all along been divided about him, but earlier closed ranks against Kurdish, US and Sunni Arab pressure. It is not in fact clear that he has lost the backing of the two main branches of the Dawa Party or of the Sadr bloc, which together gave him 56 of the 64 votes by which he won, nor that the other 8 have in fact defected from him.

That members of his own coalition have broken ranks with him this way, however, does much weaken Jaafari. He and his supporters have argued that to reverse the results of a democratic, internal party vote would be undemocratic and a slap in the face of the voters who made the UIA the largest single bloc in parliament.

The US turned against Jaafari when he allied with Muqtada al-Sadr, a young Shiite nationalist cleric, and Washington may also object to his socialist tendencies and his opposition to loose federalism. The Kurdish political leaders have slammed him for wanting a strong central government that might cut back on their privileges, and for opposing the annexation of oil-rich Kirkuk province to the Kurdistan confederacy.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Primary Sidebar

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter and have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.

Twitter

Follow Juan Cole @jricole or Informed Comment @infcomment on Twitter

Facebook



Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2023 All Rights Reserved

Posting....