BAGHDAD — An Iraqi court threw the nation’s disputed election into deeper disarray Monday by disqualifying 52 candidates, including one winner, in a legal ruling that cast doubt on the slim lead of a Sunni-backed alliance over the prime minister’s political coalition.
The decision by the three-judge election court, which accused the candidates of having ties to Saddam Hussein’s ousted Baath Party, intensified political turmoil and dealt a new setback to efforts to form a new government in Iraq nearly two months after the vote for a 325-member parliament, which must select the next prime minister.
U.S. officials had hoped the elections would boost efforts to reconcile Iraq’s divided ethnic and religious groups as American military forces prepare to withdraw combat forces by September, with the rest to follow by the end of next year. But the maneuvering following the inconclusive vote instead has created a giant political vacuum and fears of new violence.
It also threatened to anger anew Sunni voters, who had thrown their support behind secular candidate Ayad Allawi’s bloc to give it a two-seat lead.
The winning candidate who would lose his seat was from Allawi’s Iraqiya coalition. Sunnis largely have spurned Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and their anger against the Shiite-led government in 2006 and 2007 was one of the key motivators for their bloody insurgency that only recently abated.
The court also is considering the fate of at least seven other winning Iraqiya candidates accused of having Baathist ties. That decision, which is expected as early as today, could deal a fatal blow to Allawi’s lead.
Iraqiya, which captured 91 parliamentary seats compared with 89 for al-Maliki’s State of Law alliance, promised to fight the ruling and call for a new election if it is upheld.
“We will not accept such an unjust decision, and we will not stand still to such illegal and illegitimate measures,” Allawi’s spokesman Abdul-Rahman al-Bayder said. The court order “endangers the whole political process and democracy in Iraq.”
A member of the Independent High Electoral Commission, Saad al-Rawi, cautioned it was still unclear whether Monday’s decision would change the vote results. The banned candidates have a month to appeal.
