Analysis
Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi (left) meets with Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr (right) in Najaf, on January 6, 2021. Photo: AFP
The project of the national majority government idea is on its deathbed, gasping a final breath, after the shock of the Federal Supreme Court of Iraq’s interpretation of Article 70 of the Iraqi constitution, setting out the quorum for the session of electing the president at two-thirds of the total number of members of parliament. The presence of two-thirds will not be achieved without prior agreement and consensus between the political blocs, particularly between the Sadrist Movement and the Coordination Framework.
As a result, most of the large blocs announced their boycott of the February 7 parliament session to elect the president. Furthermore, the Sadrist leader surprised everyone. Muqtada al-Sadr tweeted that he might direct the members of the Sadrist bloc not to vote for the candidate of his ally, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), Hoshyar Zebari, for the presidency race. He went even further and suspended political negotiations until further notice.
Related: Iraq's federal court kills off majority government project
Sadrists stuck between strategy and tactics
The Sadrist Movement has attracted the interests of scholars and political researchers for some time. They have been monitoring their meteoric rise to power, resulting from a strategy planned by the Sadrist leader and shaped by an experienced and well-oiled electoral machine.
Sadr announced his strategy for claiming power in November 2020 when he tweeted, "If I find that the elections will result in a [Sadr] majority in the parliament and that they will obtain the premiership, therefore I will be able with their help, and as we pledged together, to complete the reform project." Although observers dismissed his ability to achieve this desire, the movement and its leader made plans.
Sadr’s spokesperson, Salah al-Obaidi, announced in a press conference held on December 29, 2020, that "there is an intention and ambition to obtain 100 seats in the upcoming elections." At the time, this sparked a wave of speculation that this would be impossible to achieve. However, the Sadrists surprised everyone and became the largest winning parliamentary bloc with 73 seats.
The Sadrist strategy is based on three pillars
The first: forming internal alliances and holding talks with two essential parties in the Iraqi political arena. The first is the Taqadum Alliance led by Mohammed al-Halbousi, and the second party is the KDP led by Masoud Barzani. They reached a deep understanding about allying before and after the elections.
The second: establishing strong foreign relations and building partnerships of mutual understanding at the regional and international levels, where the Sadrist Movement dispatched high-level representatives to several capitals intending to confirm its openness to the outside world, particularly the regional states.
The third: enhancing the internal capabilities, reorganizing the movement, and re-energizing the voter base. They thoroughly studied the election law and understood the landscape. They focused on their electoral machine, which was led by their most experienced operator, who has been responsible for the success of the Sadrists in the past. Sadr himself worked hard, calling on his supporters to go out and vote.
Their effort resulted in winning the election and securing 73 seats to become the largest single party winning as many seats since 2003. Their victory was further enhanced by the failure of their arch-rival, the Fatih Alliance, which only managed to secure 17 seats.
Sadr gave a fiery televised victory speech on October 11, 2021, after the announcement of the preliminary results, in which he said, "Praise be to God, who cherished reform with its largest bloc, an Iraqi bloc, neither eastern nor western... There is no place for corruption and corrupt people in Iraq after today, and we will remove corruption from our blood... From now on, the government or the parties will not control the money and wealth, but rather the people... Weapons must be confined to the hands of the state, and the use of weapons outside this scope is prohibited... All embassies are welcome unless they interfere in Iraqi affairs and government formation."
This discourse aroused the ire of Sadr's opponents and rivals alike; they considered it a declaration of war or a direct threat to their existence, politically and economically. They scrambled to unite under an undeclared alliance called the Coordination Framework to rival the Sadrists and stop him from taking over. This was the first tactical mistake that the Sadrists made. Observers believe that it would have been better for the movement to give messages of reassurance to the competitors, rather than raising their fears.
Sadr surprised everyone by freezing the political commission and the negotiating team, replacing them with a new team from a close circle in Najaf. This move astounded even their closest allies; they had no prior knowledge and had never dealt with the new team, which made the talks between them cool for some time. The Coordination Framework took full advantage, started to fill the vacuum, organized protests, occupied the airwaves with their analysts and advocates, submitted claims to the courts claiming the illegality of the results, and challenging the entire integrity of the elections.
In other words, the Sadrists lost the political and practical initiative, leaving the arena to its rivals. In conjunction, it suffers from internal wrangling and lost two precious months that could have been used for implementing the plans to form the largest bloc and build supportive alliances allowing the movement to secure the majority government.
Polarization failure
Observers believe that Sadr doesn't represent the Shiites alone; the Shiite world is divided between all the other political parties, from those united under the Coordination Framework banner to those outside it, such as the October protestors and the independents. His fiery speech polarized the others and prevented them from joining him. Being alone will be challenging to move forward in an alliance in which the Shiites will be a minority.
Sadr also decided to lead the negotiations personally and set aside his team to attract other Shiite blocs. He visited the leader of the Hikma Movement, Ammar al-Hakim, and the former Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on January 5, 2021, to include them in his alliance. Sadr moved back to Najaf and stayed there with no further moves. Meanwhile, the Coordination Framework continued its efforts in the street and with the judiciary.
Sadr tried again and invited the Coordination Framework forces for negotiations in Najaf and his father's house, but they refused. He then visited the Coordination Framework leaders in Baghdad on December 4, 2021. However, the meeting resulted in no agreement, and he tweeted the usual slogan of "No eastern, nor western, national majority government" to indicate the failure of the talks. The Coordination Framework insisted on participating with all parties, and Sadr insisted on excluding the State of Law and its leader, Nuri al-Maliki.
A delegation from the Coordination Framework led by Hadi al-Amiri visited Najaf on December 29, 2021, but the meeting also ended in a tweet with the same slogan. Meanwhile, the Federal Court ratified the final election results on December 27, and the president set January 9, 2022, as the date of the first parliamentary session of the newly elected parliament.
Time was ticking for everyone; the Sadrists and the Coordination Framework failed to attract other blocs. For its part, the Sadrist Movement was unable to attract the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) due to the deep disagreement between the latter and the KDP, especially concerning the position of president. The Sadrists avoided direct negotiation with the PUK. Subsequently, the Sadrists announced the tripartite alliance with the KDP and the Sovereignty Alliance.
On January 9, the parliament held its first session and the tripartite alliance was able to elect a speaker and his two deputies successfully.
Stay united; no entry with the tripartite
The Coordination Framework’s chances of preventing the Sadrists from proceeding with the election of the speaker was the latest of a series of failures. It starts with losing many seats, winning an appeal in the courts, losing the case before the Federal Court, and ending with the failure of its attempt to keep the first session open after its deputies left the parliamentary hall.
The dialogue resumed between the Sadrists and the Coordination Framework through a series of urgent messages, which resulted in a visit by Amiri to Najaf to meet Sadr on January 15. They agreed that some Coordination Framework forces would participate in the expected government without the Rule of Law. After Amiri returned to Baghdad and discussed the agreement with the Coordination Framework leadership, he informed Sadr of his retreat, according to what Sadr revealed in a televised interview on January 25, 2022.
In a related development, an informed source revealed that the leader of the State of Law, Nouri al-Maliki, sent a letter to the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran asking for his opinion on the Sadrists' disagreement with the Coordination Framework. The response came back through a visit by the commander of the Quds Force, Esmail Qaani, to Baghdad. The Supreme Leader asked the Coordination Framework parties to stay coherent and not to enter any alliance with the tripartite alliance separately.
The doors were closed once more between the Coordination Framework and the Sadrists. Meanwhile, Qaani went to meet Parliament Speaker Halbousi and the leader of the KDP, Masoud Barzani. He informed them of Iran's refusal to proceed with forming a majority government at the expense of the unity of the Shiite house, which threatens Iranian national security, calling on Barzani to intervene to heal the rift within the Shiite and be the big brother because of his political and social status.
This, in turn, prompted Barzani to launch his initiative of assigning the Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani to go to Najaf, accompanied by Halbousi and the head of the Sovereignty Alliance, Khamis al-Khanjar, on January 31, to try to persuade Sadr to address the crisis by finding a way to include the Coordination Framework parties in a consensus government.
The Najaf meeting resulted in Sadr sending a high-ranking delegation to Amiri. He presented a road map consisting of nine new points for participation in the majority government. Still, Amiri rejected it because it excluded part of the Coordination Framework parties, and the stalemate reigned once again.
The Sadrist Movement lost all available opportunities to attract Shiite blocs within the Coordination Framework - as well as other Shiite parties and independent members.
Reducing the available options
The Federal Court dealt two heavy blows to the Sadrists. The first is its decision about the largest bloc and the date of its formation. The second is its interpretation of Article 70; an interpretation that killed off the majority government project before it was born.
The Sadrist Movement's available options began to recede, making it lose the ability to maneuver. The Sadrists have confined themselves to a narrow corner, from which it isn't easy to move for several reasons, including:
First: Raising the slogan of a national majority government and insisting on excluding influential Shiite forces within the Coordination Framework. Despite the lack of support by partners within the tripartite alliance for this approach, based on their belief that consensus is the easiest and surest way to form a government, this does not satisfy all conflicting parties.
Second: The tripartite alliance consists of the strongest parties that obtain the highest number of seats within their components. They have broad public bases that support their leaders. However, these blocs do not have a shared vision and do not have a unified work program with clear parameters, goals, and mechanisms.
There are apparent differences between them, with the Sadrists advocating for reform, fighting corruption, and reorganizing the armed factions. At the same time, the priorities of the Sovereignty Alliance are based on the issues of the Sunni component, such as the reconstruction of liberated areas, the return of IDPs to their homes, and the disclosure of the fate of the missing and the disappeared. As for the KDP, its priorities are related to the KRG's problems with Baghdad, such as the budget and disputed territories.
It should be noted here that the joint paper that tripartite alliance members signed does not refer to the demands of the Sovereignty Alliance or the KDP. Nor can it be described as a governance program; it primarily has some all-around titles that deal with specific subjects that can be regarded as a program to form the national majority government.
Third: Sadr set aside his negotiating team and took matters into his hands, getting involved in the direction of negotiations and follow-up on the formation of alliances, in contrast to what happened in the past, where he would assign negotiating teams to reach common denominators that will be presented later to him. Therefore, he lost the flexibility of movement.
Fourth: The leader of the Sadrist Movement changed his negotiating team immediately after the elections, which confused the partners, as they had been dealing with the old team for more than a year, and they were not familiar with the new team. This sudden change made dealing with the partners difficult, and they lost precious time until they got acquainted.
Fifth: The absence of the last negotiating team means the absence of all previous understandings on which Sadr built all his victories and successes, as the architect of Sadr's successes and his efficient team was suddenly absent.
Furthermore, the old team was pragmatic and well versed in Iraqi politics, while the new team is known to be hawks; they encourage Sadr to be hawkish. As a result, we see that the Sadrists failed in attracting even a small number of smaller blocs and independent representatives, while the general expectation was that the Sadrists would become magnets for such parties.
Sixth: The strictness of the discourse and the lack of flexibility united the opponents despite their internal differences, as the blocs within the Coordination Framework are from several spectra and various directions, and most of them do not agree upon a vision, approach or tradition, but their sense of threat and marginalization has made them agree among themselves to preserve their entities and existence.
Seventh: Past partners of Sadr regard him as someone who forgets his partnership and would abandon them if his interest requires. Such perception is damaging for Sadr and creates distrust among the partners.
Eighth: The Sadrist failure to attract the PUK and include it in the alliance was a major tactical mistake, as the PUK and the Coordination Framework together could break the quorum in the session to elect the president. If the PUK was with the tripartite alliance, holding the session would have been much more manageable.
Ninth: The sudden shift in attitudes of Sadr without warning makes the partners feel suspicious and apprehensive about the change in the direction of the Sadrists. Perhaps the tweet that surprised the KDP about their candidate for the presidency is the best proof of this.
Tenth: Miscalculation of timing, vacating the political arena for competitors, indifference to what is happening in the political corridors, remaining as a spectator, not offering practical initiatives, adhering to and insisting on one position, and believing that others are compelled to accept, can all be classified as political tactics that have failed.
It is clear that the Sadrist Movement has won in drawing up a complex and challenging strategy and succeeded in achieving it. But it has stumbled in implementing it due to tactical errors and weak negotiating ability.
Deadlock and early elections - again
After reaching political deadlock and adherence to hardline positions by all parties, the political process has entered a dark tunnel fraught with dangers, as proceeding with the majority project has become almost impossible due to the decision of the Federal Court.
Observers believe that the Sadrists have little choice but to reach an agreement with the Coordination Framework in whole or in part to proceed with the government formation project; in our article published in December, we put forward five scenarios about what might happen in the political arena, and the fourth scenario was: "A seven-way consensus government (the Sadrists, Fatih and the Rule of Law, Azm and Taqadum, KDP and PUK) with small blocs and independents going to the opposition and choosing a consensual prime minister."
Related: Sadrists celebrate as Coordination Framework works to repeat the 2010 scenario
This scenario has become the closest to reality, and we can rename it as a five-way consensual government (the Sadrists and the Coordination Framework, the Sovereignty Alliance, the KDP, and PUK). This scenario can be called a partial consensus compared to the previous one, as many small and medium blocs will choose the opposition instead of entering the government.
The Sadrist Movement, as the winner in the elections and the head of the largest parliamentary alliance (the tripartite alliance), bears great responsibility as a result of what will happen shortly. Therefore, the leader of the Sadrist Movement should think carefully about his next steps, and perhaps the first steps to be taken are to assign his team to begin negotiating with the other blocs to reach a solution.
If not, they will need to call for new elections, as there is no other choice. Should either of these decisions not be taken, the fate and future of the country is at risk - especially if chaos spreads and armed confrontation erupts to resolve the dispute.
Farhad Alaaldin is the chairman of the Iraqi Advisory Council. He was the political adviser to former Iraqi President Fuad Masum, the former chief of staff to the KRG prime minister from 2009 to 2011, and the former senior adviser to the KRG prime minister from 2011 to 2012.
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