WASIT: IN SLAP TO MALIKI, OLD GOVERNOR ELECTED

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 BAGHDAD 001057 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/30/2019 TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR IZ SUBJECT: WASIT: IN SLAP TO MALIKI, OLD GOVERNOR ELECTED AGAIN Classified By: Deputy Pol Counselor John G. Fox, reasons 1.4(d). This is a Wasit PRT cable. ¶1. (C) Summary: Wasit,s new, 28 member Provincial Council in its fourth session approved current Governor Latif Hamid Tarfah as Wasit,s new Governor. A new coalition of the Independents and the Al Dawa Iraq Organization, both elements of the State of Law Alliance (Maliki,s list), joined with the Al-Ahrar Independent Trend (Sadrists) and the Islamic Supreme Council Iraq (ISCI) to put together 16 votes for Governor Tarfah in the second round of voting on April ¶15. Other positions were allocated as follows: Mahmud Abd Al Rida Talal from ISCI is the new Provincial Council Chairman, Mahdi Ali Jabir from Al-Dawa Iraq Organization is the Deputy Provincial Council Chairman, and Ammar Musa, not a Provincial Council member but rather an unelected member of the Al- Ahrar Independent Trend is the Second Deputy Governor. The First Deputy Governor has yet to be selected. The big winners from all this are Governor Tarfah and ISCI, which had lost much support in the elections. The losers are Maliki's wing of Da'wa, Allawi's Iraqi National List -- and the people of Wasit, who had voted for change. End summary. NEW COALITION ¶2. (SBU) On April 10, Wasit province's new Provincial Council (PC) was sworn into office and held its first session. Beforehand, a Dawa-led coalition had been formed of all of the elements of the PC except for ISCI and the Independents from the Dawa list. This coalition had publicly stated its intention to select a new governor from outside the ranks of the Provincial Council. However, since the PC,s first meeting on April 10, there has been a great deal of maneuvering in an attempt to form a coalition that would retain Latif Tarfah as governor. On the evening of April 15, a coalition consisting of ISCI's six seats, five seats from the Independents that ran under the State of Law /Maliki's list, the three seats from the Dawa Iraq section of the State of Law list, and the three seats of the Al-Ahrar (Sadrist) list met to vote Latif Tarfah back in as the Governor of Wasit. It took two rounds of voting. The first vote gave Tarfah only 14 of the 17 members present. The second round put him over the top, with 16 votes with one member of the coalition abstaining. The members of Al-Dawa Maliki section, the Iraqi Constitutional Party and the Iraqi National List, a total of 11 seats and not members of this new coalition, boycotted the April 15 sessions that elected Tarfah as Governor. MEET THE NEW GOVERNOR ) SAME AS THE OLD GOVERNOR ¶3. (C) Latif Hamid Tarfah, a former teacher from the southeastern Wasit city of Al-Hayy, has been governor since the Provincial Council elections that replaced the first Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) appointed PC in 2005. Tarfah, who is well known to the Coalition and PRT officers in the province, has a reputation as a do-nothing and is strongly suspected of corruption, especially concerning PC-related construction projects. His power base appears to be his tribe (the Al-Igayl, one of the largest tribes in Al-Hayy and a part of the Rabia federation, the largest tribal federation in the province),as well as his reputation as PM Maliki,s man in the province. We believe, however, that his power comes primarily from his ability to buy support, because of his role in allocating PC capital project contracts. COMMENT: WINNERS AND LOSERS QCOMMENT: WINNERS AND LOSERS ¶4. (C) The big winners of this most recent political turn of events are Governor Tarfah, ISCI, and the new Provincial Council Chair Mahmud Abd Al-Rida Talal. Governor Tarfah will remain in a position from which, we believe, he has benefited monetarily. ISCI has been able to maneuver itself back into a position of power in the PC despite losing a great deal of strength in the last election. It now owns the PC Chairmanship under Mahmud Abd Al)Rida Talal, the former Mayor of Aziziyah. Talal is nominally an independent but he ran under ISCI's list and voted with ISCI during the selection of the Governor. Talal is well known in Aziziyah and, as Mayor, played an active role with Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) and Coalition Forces to remove the Sadrist militia threat from Azzizia. He is also linked by business deals to Governor Turfah and was likely one of the key interlocutors in putting together this coalition with ISCI. ¶5. (C) The big losers in this realignment in the Provincial Council are the Iraqi National list with three seats (former PM Allawi's party),the Dawa Maliki section of BAGHDAD 00001057 002 OF 002 the Dawa party with five seats (these people opposed Governor Tarfah's re-election),the Iraqi Constitutional Party (MoI Bulani) with three seats, and the people of Wasit who voted to remove ISCI and other religious parties from their dominant position in the Provincial Council. Governor Tarfah and the new PC Chair Mahmud Abd Al-Rida Talal have had successful business dealings in the past and both are suspected of corruption related to government contracts. We believe that the strong ties between these two men may have been the decisive factor in creating this latest coalition. Public reaction to the coalition and the re-election of the Governor is expected to be quite negative, as was demonstrated outside the PC building this week by several hundred demonstrators opposing a renewed term for Tarfah. People who were looking for change from the Iraqi election system may now decide that the democratic system has failed them as it did not turn out the former governor and the religious parties, both of which are strongly suspected, by the public, of corruption. BUTENIS