Published: March 7 2007 20:22 | Last updated: March 7 2007 20:22
A Shia Islamist party formerly allied to Nouri al-Maliki, prime minister, withdrew from Iraq’s ruling coalition on Wednesday, declaring itself ready to join other groups to form a cross-sectarian alliance.
The move by the Fadila or Virtue party does not represent an immediate challenge to Mr Maliki’s government, whose United Iraqi Alliance is still the largest bloc by far in parliament and is in close alliance with the second largest, the Kurdistan Alliance.
But it does indicate the long-term weakness of Mr Maliki, who is accused both of running a government that only looks out for Shia sectarian interests, and of selling out the Shia under pressure from the US and Sunni community.
Fadila spokesman Nadim al-Jabiri told a news conference that it would “sit in parliament as an independent bloc awaiting moves from other political blocs to launch a patriotic agenda”.
“We consider the first step of saving Iraq is to dismantle these blocs and to prevent blocs forming on a sectarian basis,” he said in remarks reported by Reuters.
Fadila is a branch of the radical Sadrist movement built by the venerated cleric Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr in the 1990s, but does not acknowledge the leadership of his son, Moqtada al-Sadr, to whom the majority of Sadrists are at least nominally loyal.
Fadila holds 15 seats in the 275-member parliament as it was one of the half-dozen main partners on the list of the United Iraqi Alliance, which won 140 seats in the December 2005 elections. Its members also head the local government of Basra, a major port in the south.
Fadila’s criticism of the Maliki government as “sectarian” may be an attempt to reach out to other groups, such as the Sunni-led Iraqi National Dialogue Front (which won 11 seats in 2005) and the Iraqi National List of former prime minister Iyad Allawi (which won 25 seats), both of which characterise themselves as non-sectarian.
But with radically different core constituencies there is little indication that the groups could agree on a common platform, let alone attract enough allies to form a majority.
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