US embassy cable - 05BAGHDAD4958

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 03 BAGHDAD 004958 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/12/2015 
TAGS: PREL, PHUM, KDEM, IZ, Parliament, Elections 
SUBJECT: SHI'A TECHNOCRAT TALKS OF INTIMIDATION AND CABINET 
FORMATION 
 
Classified By: CLASSIFIED BY: POLITICAL COUNSELOR ROBERT S. FORD, REASO 
NS 1.5(B) AND (D). 
 
1.  (S) Summary.  Iraqi Transitional National Assembly 
(TNA) member and former Minister of Oil Thamir Ghadhban 
described methods of election intimidation and urged the 
USG to call on the political parties likely responsible for 
this intimidation to stop it.  He predicted that the United 
Iraqi Alliance (UIA) would get 110-120 seats, with SCIRI's 
'Adil 'Abd al-Mahdi as the frontrunner for Prime Minister, 
although he said former PM Ayad Allawi, if he did well, 
could become Prime Minister.  He said that the next Iraqi 
cabinet should avoid treating ministries as political 
spoils and should appoint technocrats, presumably including 
himself, in key ministries.  End summary. 
 
----------------------- 
Widespread Intimidation 
----------------------- 
 
2.  (SBU) Iraqi Transitional National Assembly (TNA) member 
and former Minister of Oil Thamir Ghadhban, who is not 
running for the Council of Representatives (CoR), described 
widespread examples of intimidation in the election 
campaign, which he said he had heard from his colleagues in 
the National Assembly and from the Iraqi and Arabic media. 
He said he had heard that a number of people involved in the 
campaign 
were killed in Karbala, and while they were ex-Iraqi Army 
and ex-Ba'thists, the police officer entrusted with the 
investigation was shot dead himself. 
 
3.  (S) Ghadhban said that Ali al-Dabbagh, a TNA member 
formerly with the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) who had tried 
to recruit Ghadhban for his Independent Grouping of Iraq's 
Competent People List (835), had been supported by two 
clerics in Najaf, but that both had ceased backing him.  One 
cleric had been bribed, Ghadhban reported, and the other 
had been threatened and ceased supporting Dabbagh. 
Dabbagh, who is running lists in the Shi'a provinces, had 
not a single poster left undefaced in Basrah, Ghadhban 
said. 
 
4.  (S) Asked by PolOffs whether this intimidation was 
having an impact, Ghadban said that Allawi had won 150,000 
votes in Basrah in the last election, but that he may not 
get near this amount this time because of intimidation. 
 
5.  (SBU) Ghadhban cited methods of intimidation he had 
heard of through his sources: 
 
- Scaring people not to vote for secular or smaller 
parties, including by threats of violence against Iraqis 
who voted for such parties. 
 
- Rigging vote boxes in polling centers under the control 
of certain political parties. 
 
- Party supporters marking many ballots in the last hour 
that polling centers are opened but when few voters are 
present. 
 
- Party supporters opening ballot boxes and adding a mark 
to votes for leading opposition parties, thereby 
invalidating such ballots because the voter appears to have 
voted for two parties. 
 
- Voters lubricating their fingers with petroleum jelly or 
lube oil before dipping their fingers in ink, allowing the 
ink to be wiped away so the voters can vote again with the 
connivance of local election officials. 
 
6.  (C) PolOffs drew Ghadhban's attention to Ambassador 
Khalilzad's statement against intimidation, issued the day 
before.  Ghadhban urged the USG and others to be in touch 
directly with the top leaders of the United Iraqi Alliance 
and the Kurdistan Coalition, and that the USG urge the top 
leaders to order their parties to stop using these 
techniques.  They were undermining the legitimacy of the 
election and these actions would backfire against the 
parties that perpetrated them. 
 
7.  (C) Ghadhban dismissed Poloff's question whether the 
message issued in Grand Ayatollah 'Ali al-Sistani's name, 
urging the Shi'a faithful not to vote for "dangerous" 
(secular) or smaller parties had been offset by the formal 
retraction issued by his office.  He said that Sayyid 
Muhammad Ridha al-Sistani and others had sent messages 
to Sistani's network of Shi'a clergy to send clerics out to 
the villages to make sure they got the message that they 
should vote for the UIA. 
 
--------------------- 
Ghadhban's Prediction 
--------------------- 
 
8.  (C) Ghadhban predicted that as a result of these 
tactics, the UIA would win 120 seats.  The Kurds will win 
55-60 ("they want to be number two," he said).  The Sunnis 
would win 50-55 and the National List (Allawi) would win 30 
seats, more or less.  Ahmad Chalabi, Sherif Ali bin 
al-Husayn and Dr. Salama al-Khafaji would win 3-5 total 
seats, minorities would win 5, and smaller parties would 
divide the remainder. 
 
9.  (C) Ghadhban said a moderate, technocratic government 
would serve Iraq best, but he feared the result of this 
election would not be this, but rather a different outcome 
that would strengthen sectarianism.  In such a case, he said 
the 
insurgency would subside but it would take a very long 
time. 
 
10.  (C) Moreover, Ghadhban said, if the parties treat the 
ministries like spoils, this would lead to a very weak 
government.  Far better, he said, to have a strong Prime 
Minister who would have a major role in selecting his own 
ministers and who could quickly form a government. 
 
11.  (C) Unlike after the January election, when 'Abd 
al-'Aziz al-Hakim backed down on 'Adil 'Abd al-Mahdi 
becoming Prime Minister, it was Ghadhban's sense that, this 
time, 'Abd al-Mahdi would prevail.  Ghadhban acknowledged 
that 'Abd al-Mahdi may not have the votes to prevail over 
Jafari in a direct contest within the UIA.  Instead, Ghadhban 
expected a backroom deal in which Hakim would argue that 
Ja'fari had had his chance and that now it was SCIRI's turn. 
He 
further suggested that key Da'wa party officials would 
abandon Ja'fari in order to make it possible for them to 
hold cabinet posts.  (Note:  The understanding among UIA 
parties in January was that the party that got the 
premiership would not get any other cabinet seats.  End 
note.)  SCIRI will see to it that other Da'wa Party 
officials are offered top ministries, which they could not 
get if Ja'fari remained as Prime Minister. 
 
12.  (C) Ghadhban predicted it would take 2 1/2 months to 
form a cabinet:  15 days for the election results to be 
announced, 15 days to convene the Council of 
Representatives (CoR), a few days to elect a speaker and 
two deputies, then 2 weeks to elect a President and two 
deputies, then 2 weeks for the Presidency Council to select 
a Prime Minister-designate.  The Prime Minister-designate 
would then take up to a month to form his cabinet.  He 
predicted Jalal Talabani would be re-elected President, 
with a Shi'a and a Sunni deputy, the speaker of the CoR 
would be a Sunni, and the Prime Minister a Shi'a, most 
likely from the UIA.  If Allawi gets 40 seats, Ghadhban 
said, this prediction could be upset. 
 
13. (C) PolOffs said that, in the USG view, key ministries 
like Interior should not be in the hands of militias. 
Ghadhban said that some "liberal members" of the UIA would 
accept a Sunni or a Kurd as Minister of Interior.  The 
PUK's Kosrat Rasul 'Ali was someone who was respected, he 
said.  However, in such a case, the UIA would want the 
Minister of Defense position.  There was some desire, he 
said, for a change in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 
 
------------------------------------ 
Strengthening Parliamentary Capacity 
------------------------------------ 
 
14.  (SBU) Ghadhban, who had served in the TNA but was not 
running for the CoR, urged the USG and others to consider 
programs to strengthen parliamentary capacity.  "You need 
to educate and to explain what a federal system is," he 
said.  "It is not a loose coalition of separate regional 
states."  Ghadhban was doubtful federalism would take root 
outside of the north.  "We are still a very centralized 
state."  He criticized the recent decision by the Kurdistan 
Regional Government to hold inaugural ceremonies at the 
start of oil well drilling operations north of the Green 
Line.  "The Federal Government must have resources," he 
said, and "it must be just" to all Iraqis.  This could not 
happen if the Federal Government did not have a voice in 
natural resource decisions. 
 
15.  (C) Comment.  Ghadhban clearly would like to return as 
Minister of Oil, and realizes that by not running for the 
CoR himself, he leaves the door open for his  name to be put 
forward by several influential figures, most of all ' 
Abd al-Mahdi.  By aligning politically with independent 
Shi'a technocrats around 'Abd al-Mahdi -- such as former 
Minister of Communications Muhammad al-Hakim -- Ghadhban 
is trying to outmaneuver his chief rival, former and current 
Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr al-'Ulum.  Within the UIA last 
spring, 
the Oil Ministry was "given" to Fadhillah Party, but they 
could not find a credible candidate, so the portfolio went 
to Bahr al-'Ulum despite reports of serious corruption in 
the Oil Ministry in his previous tenure.  However, neither 
Ghadhban nor Muhammad al-Hakim are SCIRI loyalists, and 
they do not bring anything to SCIRI's campaign for the 
premiership, which will face tough going if Da'wa hangs 
together in favor of Ja'fari, Sadr backs Ja'fari against 
Hakim and 'Abd al-Mahdi, and Fadhillah votes the way Sadr 
does.  If 'Abd al-Mahdi becomes Prime Minister, he may 
be forced to use Ghadhban and others as advisers in a 
"kitchen cabinet," influencing policy through the Prime 
Minister's office, rather than through the Ministries. 
Ghadhban appears to under-appreciate the need for 
deal-making to secure the Prime Minister's job for anyone, 
and to under-estimate the desire by most Iraqi political 
parties to see ministries as political spoils for the 
"winners" of the election.  If SCIRI uses up one of its 
chits in the ministerial sweepstakes to put forward 
Ghadhban as Minister of Oil, other parties may reason 
that if they cannot control the Ministry of Oil themselves, 
the next-best outcome would be to have it in the hands of 
a respected Shi'a technocrat like Ghadhban.  END COMMENT. 
KHALILZAD