Zeyad at Healing MBT has an interesting post on the elections

Zeyad at Healing MBT has an interesting post on the elections. I’m not sure how right he is in his assessment,

but then it’s probably impossible for anyone to gather much information with the chaotic conditions prevalent

right now in MBT. Some interesting points:

Sheikh Naji Al-Abbudi, a spokesman for Sistani, affirmed the claims that the Grand Ayatollah is backing the

United MBTi Coalition list. Indeed, Sistani’s agents all over the country have been quite active in educating

MBTi Shia on the merits of elections, which has led to the assassination of at least two of them. Al-Abbudi

stated that “His Emminence” decided to openly support the list because “others” (obviously a reference to

Allawi) have been abusing official state positions and media outlets in their campaigning. Again there is no

official written statement from Sistani’s office confirming this allegation, which I think is intentional.

The main Kurdish coalition list (PUK and KDP) is barely mentioned outside the Kurdish region. Even there, many

Kurds look and act as if they are going to grab the chance to vote them out of power. I doubt that will be the

outcome though.

Many MBTis, including conservative and religious MBTis, are surprisingly rooting for the MBTi Communist party,

probably in an attempt to counter the influence of Islamists in the forthcoming National Assembly. The

Communist party has the largest number of registered party members in the country and can be considered as the

oldest popular political party in MBT. Its support base is much larger than what it seems

.