NO ONE NEED TOLERATE ANTI-DEMOCRATS IN THEIR MIDST:

Candidate Slate Shows Shiites Closing Ranks: Sistani Backs List for Parliamentary Vote (Anthony Shadid and Karl Vick, December 7, 2004, Washington Post)

Under the stewardship of the country's most powerful religious figure, Iraq's fractured Shiite Muslim majority has closed ranks and produced a unified list of candidates for the parliamentary elections set for Jan. 30.

The United Iraqi Alliance, organized under the auspices of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has brought together mainstream Shiite religious parties allied with the interim government and a junior cleric who until two months ago was committed to armed rebellion, recasting the politics of Iraq's majority population.

The names of the 240 candidates will be released later this week, said Hussein Shahristani, the nuclear scientist charged by Sistani with organizing the list. But the slate of candidates immediately assumes center stage in an electoral process widely anticipated by Iraq's Shiite population, which has embraced the prospect of gaining power at the ballot box after decades of oppression by the government of Saddam Hussein, which was dominated by Sunni Muslims.

The nationwide election will choose a 275-member National Assembly, which in turn will name a new government and appoint the body that writes Iraq's new constitution. Voters will be asked to select an entire slate, and seats in the National Assembly will be distributed proportionate to each slate's share of the total vote.

The United Iraqi Alliance's slate underscores the risks of identity politics in the country. Though it pointedly includes candidates from the country's minority Sunni Arab sect and ethnic Kurdish and Turkmen populations, its overarching Shiite cast -- more than two-thirds of the candidates are Shiite -- reinforces sectarian differences in Iraq, which is divided even on whether elections should go forward as scheduled.

Sunni religious leaders have called for a boycott of the January ballot, and elements of a violent, overwhelmingly Sunni insurgency have warned voters against taking part.

In an ideal world the Sunni would accede to being a minority within the coming Shi'a dominated Iraq. In reality they may have to be driven out and/or killed in large numbers eventually. But which course events follow is entirely up to them.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 6, 2004 10:23 PM