This situation raises some real concerns for me regarding the Iraqi elections.

An Iraqi court has ruled that some of the most prominent Sunni Muslims who were elected to parliament last week won't be allowed to serve because officials suspect that they were high-ranking members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.

Knight Ridder has obtained a copy of the court ruling, issued Thursday, which has yet to be circulated to the public.

The ruling is likely to dampen Bush administration hopes that the election would bring more of the disaffected Sunni minority into Iraq's political process and undermine Sunni support for the insurgency. Instead, the decision is likely to stoke fears of widening sectarian divisions in a nation already in danger of descending into civil war.

Adil al-Lami, the head of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, said he would honor the court's decision and that none of the accused Sunnis would appear on the final list of parliament members.

And thoe disqualified are not just minor individuals -- they include a number of leading Sunni candidates.

But preliminary results showed that some of the prominent Sunni politicians on the list had likely won seats. Among them: Adnan al-Janabi, the second-highest-ranking member of the constitutional committee and a top candidate on U.S.-backed former prime minister Ayad Allawi's slate, and Rasem al-Awadi, a National Assembly member and also on Allawi's slate. Five members of the Iraqi Accord Front, the principal Sunni electoral slate, also were on the list.

Saleh Mutlaq, a prominent Sunni politician, said that the ruling would agitate already frustrated Sunnis who are questioning the validity of the elections.

The commission said it would have the final list of winners sometime next month.

So what we have here is the post-election disqualification of candidates who have won seats in the new parliament. Such a move is, in my view, corrosive of the ethos of democracy that we have been attempting to instill in Iraq. The candidate lists have been out there for some tome -- and several of those disqualified were even involved in writing the new iraqi constitution -- why wait until the election is over?

Given that Sunnis are already protesting the results of the election and questioning their legitimacy, I can't help but think that this ruling will simply magnify the problem.

Posted by: Greg at 03:01 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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