With backing of Shia ulama, Iraqi communists march confidently

BAGHDAD: Carrying red flags and posters of Karl Marx, hundreds of Iraqi communists marched here on Tuesday for May Day, convinced their joint list with Shia leader Muqtada Sadr can win this month’s election.

In a joyful procession, demonstrators also waved the blue flags of their electoral list and chanted slogans like “Listen to the will of the people: reform and the end of corruption” and “The workers are the spearhead of the country”.

For the first time in Iraq’s history, the black-turbaned Shia ulama have allied with the hammer and sickle of secular communists in a joint list for the May 12 parliamentary polls.

The “Marching Towards Reform” alliance is made up of six mostly secular groups, including Iraq’s communist party and Istaqma, a party of technocrats backed by Muqtada Sadr, who suspended his Ahrar bloc and called on his 34 deputies not to run in the polls.

“It’s not unrealistic that our joint list gets 40 deputies and is in the lead,” said Raed Fahmi, leader of the Iraqi Communist Party, which has one representative in parliament.

The joint list has 623 candidates nationwide, except three Kurdish provinces and Kirkuk.

Gray-haired and smiling, 58year-old Jassem al-Hilfi thinks “there will be a surprise” at this year ’s polls. His calculation is simple. In the 2014 elections, Shia parties won 104 seats.

But “today, they are divided into four, so no one will be able to surpass us if we get 40 seats, which is possible, since the Sadrists have 34 seats on their own”. If the joint list wins, “we will ask to form a government with other components”.

“And if they refuse, we will be the main opposition force against the corrupt,” added Jassem.

Although optimistic, he is not blind to the difficulties Sadr faces.

“Sadr is under pressure from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey... countries who see us as godless,” he said.