If some people believe that the Iraqi elections of 6 March were over and their results decided, then Muqtada Sadr has pushed this belief toward the abyss, after he called on his partisans to name their preferred candidate for Iraqi prime minister in a referendum on five people chosen by Sadr himself. Since the Iraqi elections resemble most folkloric occasions that some call “elections” in the Arab world, they are nothing but a cover for all of the social fragmentation and political defects; they can also be interpreted by any party according to its own whims. This means that the electoral process loses its original function, as a result of the usual attempt of manipulating what the ballots say, or the repugnant game that has been repeated ad nauseam. Imagine, for example, that in next month's elections in Britain, one of the losing parties, after the results are announced, calls on its partisans to take part in their own elections, in which they choose who they want as prime minister. If a sane British citizen were informed of such a thing, he would think it was material for a comedy. First of all, it is against the law, as the government authority usually has the right to call for elections and organize referendums. Secondly, it violates the will of the voters, who expressed their choice by selecting the candidate lists that they voted for. In Iraq, the results of the “Sadr referendum” will strike at the entire election results, as the votes of the Sadrists (who will get 40 seats in the new legislature) will all go to the candidate who wins this referendum. This choice will greatly influence the direction of voting in the entire National Shiite Alliance itself. In the end, this will mean that the “Sadr referendum” will tip the balance for this or that candidate as prime minister, irrespective of how many votes his bloc received in the actual elections. At first, it seemed like the Iraqi elections would have a positive impact, as they dismantled the loyalties that were hitherto exclusively sectarian, and which characterized the conflict that followed the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime. And to a great extent, this was indeed the case: The Sunnis returned to the political scene and supported a list, one of whose “virtues” was that it was not exclusively beholden to a single foreign party, while it also featured sectarian diversity among its members. Then the Shiite vote was split among followers of the three main currents (al-Maliki – Sadr – al-Hakim), while the Kurds also split their votes, outside the traditional Barzani-Talabani alliance. With a situation such as this, it was natural to conclude that a pro-Iraqi nationalist orientation could benefit from this fragmentation. However, the involvement of foreign parties in the electoral process has greatly reduced the possibility of such a project taking place. This began with most of the candidates resorting to the Iranian “authority” and asking for help and for its opinion regarding the upcoming phrase, whether it terms of forging alliances or the person Tehran whom would like to see forming the new government. All of this took part under the slogan of “negotiations to form the government take place in Iraq and not outside it,” as the current Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said more than once. But it is difficult to find many people who believe this notion, as it is also repudiated by the role played by the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad, and the visits undertaken by the winning blocs to Tehran, particularly the National Alliance and the State of Law [coalition], and the contacts they made there. If the “Sadr referendum” has any role at all, it is to practically speaking cancel the results of the Iraqi elections and put the selection of the next prime minister in the hands of the supporters of Muqtada Sadr. If the Iranian “advice” to Ammar al-Hakim and Nuri al-Maliki does not have an impact, then the decision of the Sadrists, and the ties of this group's leader to the Iranian authorities, will have the final say. This is all under a slogan of “the deciding voice should go to the people,” while the “people” here means those who are loyal to this particular political movement. Meanwhile, the other, wider public, had its say a month ago, but this did not agree with the whims of Muqtada Sadr and those who support him, prompting them to hence give us the “brilliant” game of the recent referendum.
