{"id":499426,"date":"2010-04-01T10:00:54","date_gmt":"2010-04-01T14:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/?p=76138"},"modified":"2010-04-01T10:00:54","modified_gmt":"2010-04-01T14:00:54","slug":"muqtada-al-sadr-made-prime-minister-of-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/499426","title":{"rendered":"Muqtada al-Sadr Made Prime Minister of Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_76139\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"width: 310px\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-76139\" title=\"Muqtada \/ Moqtada al-Sadr\" src=\"http:\/\/static1.firedoglake.com\/1\/files\/2010\/04\/Moqtada-al-sadr-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Muqtada al-Sadr<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Actually not even really an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/04\/01\/world\/middleeast\/01iraq.html?partner=rss&amp;emc=rss\">April Fool&#8217;s Day joke<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div class='wbq'>\n<p>Followers of Moktada al-Sadr, the militant cleric whose militia was a major force in the Shiite insurgency against American forces, announced Wednesday that they were arranging a special vote to pick Iraq\u2019s next prime minister.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Sadr, who has been living in Iran, released a statement through his political office in Iraq that called for putting the \u201cchoice of prime minister into the hands of the Iraqi public through a referendum for all Iraqi people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The move appeared to be part political gimmick and part public relations masterstroke. The referendum would have no legal authority, but would continue the political maturing of a movement that moved away from violence, embraced the democratic process, and solidified its political force in the March 7 parliamentary election. The group won as many as 40 of the 325 seats, possibly pushing it past Kurdish groups in talks on forming a government.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>That&#8217;s kind of genius.  After holding the election, the way to pick the next Prime Minister is to&#8230; hold another election.  And they&#8217;re really doing this, on Friday and Saturday.  Polling places will be Sadrist offices around the country.  The ballot will have five names: Iyad Allawi, Nouri al-Maliki, Jaafar Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, Adil Abdul Mahdi, and Ibrahim Jaafari.  Three of them have already been Prime Minister; Mahdi&#8217;s a current Vice President, and al-Sadr is the preferred choice for the State of Law party should they drop Maliki (and also Muqtada&#8217;s uncle).<\/p>\n<p>While anyone would be able to vote, the assumption is that the electorate would look overwhelmingly Sadrist.  And they know they can swing the choice of the next Prime Minister and the next government coalition by themselves.  With no standards or Election Commission watching over the vote, they can make the results out to say basically whatever they want it to say.  And if that gives them an excuse to demand the departure of Maliki from atop State of Law, the man who attacked the Mahdi Army in Basra,as a condition of their support, so be it.<\/p>\n<p>Muqtada al-Sadr is Iraqi&#8217;s main populist, and he lives in <em>Tehran<\/em>.  That&#8217;s smooth.<\/p>\n<p class=\"akst_link\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/news.firedoglake.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/share-this\/share-icon-16x16.gif\" alt=\"Share This icon\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/?p=76138&amp;akst_action=share-this\"  title=\"Email, post to del.icio.us, etc.\" id=\"akst_link_76138\" class=\"akst_share_link\" rel=\"noindex nofollow\">&nbsp;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Muqtada al-Sadr Actually not even really an April Fool&#8217;s Day joke: Followers of Moktada al-Sadr, the militant cleric whose militia was a major force in the Shiite insurgency against American forces, announced Wednesday that they were arranging a special vote to pick Iraq\u2019s next prime minister. Mr. Sadr, who has been living in Iran, released [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4406,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-499426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4406"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}