Six Iraq election winners face ban on Baath links

Six candidates who won parliamentary seats at Iraq's elections face losing them just days after results were announced, the body charged with barring Saddam Hussein loyalists said on Monday. At least one of the six is a member of former prime minister Iyad Allawi's secular Iraqiya bloc, which came first in the March 7 poll.
The six were among a group of more than 50 names initially put forward as parliamentary hopefuls earlier this month to replace candidates previously barred by the Justice and Accountability Committee (JAC). "On March 3, the election commission presented 54 names to replace those who had been banned" by the JAC for their alleged links to Saddam's Baath Party, said the body's executive director Ali al-Lami.
"We informed the commission that 52 of those people fell under the committee's responsibility and six of them won a seat in parliament. We have evidence and documents showing their affiliations and political responsibilities within the Baath."
Lami himself ran for parliament as part of the Iraqi National Alliance (INA), a coalition led by Shiite religious parties. His involvement in the vote and the JAC drew criticism from opponents who questioned his impartiality. The list of 52 names compiled by the JAC, details of which Lami declined to divulge, now goes before a three-member judicial committee which will decide whether or not members of the group will be barred.
Lami said banned candidates could not be replaced by their party, and added any votes cast for those would-be lawmakers would be annulled, which would have a major impact on an already close election.
One of the six successful candidates was Hamdi Naji, a Sunni Arab candidate for Iraqiya in Diyala who is currently being held by security forces on allegations of terrorism. Iraqiya finished first in the nation-wide poll with 91 seats, two more than the State of Law Alliance of caretaker Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. The INA won 70 seats.
In January, the JAC barred about 500 candidates from the polls on account of their alleged links to Saddam's banned Baath Party. The row over the bans dominated the election campaign, raising questions about the JAC's legal status, the judiciary's independence, the electoral commission's credibility and the ultimate fairness of the vote. The process also heightened political tensions in a country which was engulfed by deadly sectarian violence in 2006 and 2007, and came as the US is set to withdraw half of its troops by the end of August.