On the latter count, they are preaching to the converted. Unable to defeat Sadr or avoid dealing with him, the CF is attempting to contain him by repeatedly calling on him to return to the proverbial “Shia house” under a united banner and to form with them a true Shia majority. These scare tactics failed to impress Sadr or his Kurdish and Sunni allies. (In this, they borrowed Lebanese Hezbollah’s vernacular where the party used a constitutional provision that guarantees the right of one-third of the cabinet to override the will of the majority.) However, realizing that the title could hurt them, they rebranded to the more positive sounding “guarantor third,” promoting themselves as the sole guarantors of the rights of the Shia to political dominance. Reaching out to smaller Sunni and Kurdish parties, they declared themselves to be the “obstructive third” and indeed managed to abort two parliamentary sessions to elect a president. They have even hinted at possible civil conflict should they be excluded from power. They have used this narrative to fan fears of Shia disenfranchisement, ignoring the fact that Sadr’s own Shia party is by far the largest bloc in parliament and in the Save the Homeland coalition. The Coordinating Framework parties arouse sectarian passions by sowing fears that a divided Shia front will strip the community of what they deem are its hard-earned gains. They arouse sectarian passions by sowing fears that a divided Shia front will strip the community of what they deem are its hard-earned gains. They generally pursue a sectarian rhetoric and have argued that Sadr’s proposed national majority government-dependent as it would be on the Save the Homeland tripartite coalition and excluding the CF-marginalizes the demographic majoritarian nature of Iraq’s Shia and thus denies the Shia their rightful political role. After the formation of the CF, they claimed that they held a parliamentary majority but could not prove it. In the weeks after the elections, the losing Shia parties denounced the results as fraudulent and tried to have them overturned. Infuriated by their exclusion by Sadr, the remaining Shia parties coalesced as the Coordinating Framework (CF) whose tactics have shifted over the last six months. Together, the three announced the establishment of the Save the Homeland coalition, to secure a cross-sectarian, cross-ethnic national majority that can support the formation of a Sadrist-led new government. Sadr proceeded to enter into an alliance with the Democratic Party of Kurdistan and the Sovereignty Coalition, a broad Sunni bloc headed by Speaker of Parliament Mohammed al-Halbousi. The Sadrists would have to form alliances with other parties to build an absolute parliamentary majority of 165 seats (out of 329) that can nominate and give confidence to a prime minister-designate and a government. Owing to ambiguities in the Iraqi constitution pertaining to who forms a government, and to a 2010 Constitutional Court definition of what constitutes the largest parliamentary bloc, Sadr’s movement is not necessarily the prima facie party that would be tasked with forming a government. This has thrown Iraqi politics into a spin, with Maliki and the Fatah alliance trying to play an inordinate role in forming Iraq’s putative cabinet, electing a president, and running the government. To be sure, no one could doubt that Sadr was the Shia victor by an overwhelming margin. Fatah, a broad coalition that comprises several Iran-affiliated outfits operating within the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), garnered a meager 17 seats. Its closest Shia competitor, the State of Law coalition headed by former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, won 33. In Iraq’s parliamentary elections last October, the Sadrist Movement led by the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr emerged as the largest bloc with 73 seats.
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