SADR CITY DAC MEMBERS PREDICT JA'FARI WIN WILL

C O N F I D E N T I A L BAGHDAD 000490 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/16/2016 TAGS: PGOV PHUM PINS PNAT KDEM IZ SUBJECT: SADR CITY DAC MEMBERS PREDICT JA'FARI WIN WILL BOOST SADRISTS IN SADR CITY REF: BAGHDAD 262 Classified By: POLITICAL COUNSELOR ROBERT S. FORD FOR REASONS 1.4 (B) AND (D). ¶1. (C) Sadr City District Advisory Council (DAC) chair Hassan Shama and Sadr City DAC member Dr. Haider Jabar Ziden told PolOff in a February 13 meeting that Prime Minister (PM) Ibrahim Ja'fari's renomination to the PM post will likely boost Sadrist influence in Sadr City. Ja'fari has thus far allowed the Sadrists to intimidate their opponents and effectively control Sadr City. Now that Ja'fari has the Shia Islamist Coalition (List 555) nod, thanks in large part to Sadrist support, our contacts predict the situation in Sadr City will only worsen. The Sadrists, they predicted, would use intimidation to win elections that are far from free and fair. Our contacts opined that, if free elections were to be held, about 50 percent of the DAC members would be reelected. If the Sadrists are allowed to intimidate candidates and voters as they have in the past (reftel), then they will win perhaps as many as 30 of the 41 DAC seats. With SCIRI, Dawa, and the Fadhila Party taking the rest of the seats, there will be no room for independent candidates such as himself. ¶2. (C) To combat this, Shama recommended reserving 25 percent of the DAC seats for women, with an additional 25 percent of the seats reserved for Sadr City minorities, such as Kurds. This would prevent a complete takeover of the DAC by the Sadrists, Shama argued. This is an important goal, our contacts argued, because the DAC is the only counterweight to the Sadrists in Sadr City. MNF-I and the Iraqi Security Forces have thus far not contained the Sadrists, our contacts lamented. ¶3. (C) Comment: The Shia Islamist and the Iraqi national political leadership more broadly, are still trying to understand just how influential the Sadr camp would be in a new Jafari-led government. Down at the local level in Sadr City, Hassan Shama is a well-known contact; his opposition to the Sadrists is well-documented. His concern that independent candidates will be squeezed out by the established political parties is shared by many on the DAC. While some DAC members have decided to join the established political parties, others have not. We can expect the Sadrists to resist any attempt in the national assembly to reserve a fixed number of seats for women in provincial or local elections; many Islamists are not comfortable with such quotas for women. End Comment. KHALILZAD