BAGHDAD — Earlier this week, in an attempt to reach out to constituents, Iyad Allawi threw a garden party at his Baghdad headquarters for tribal sheiks from southern Iraq.
The day before, while campaigning in the holy city of Najaf, he had been pelted with shoes and rocks, and this time he was taking no chances. Protected by a ring of guards, Allawi was staying in his compound. Voters -- and those who could deliver crucial Shiite votes -- would have to come to him.
"I have very extreme forces who are assembled against me," Allawi, 60, said later. "They would like to get rid of me physically, let alone politically."
The former interim prime minister is provocative indeed. His comeback bid in Thursday's national parliamentary election is seen as the biggest threat to Iraq's religious-based Shiite Muslim establishment.
Allawi was appointed interim leader by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, which oversaw Iraq after the 2003 invasion that toppled President Saddam Hussein. He portrays himself as a secular alternative, and heads a bloc that includes Sunni Arabs.
In January's legislative election, Allawi's coalition garnered just 14% of the vote. This time, he and supporters hope more Iraqis will be swayed by his political message than by the sectarian appeals of clerics.
To win them over, Allawi has launched a carefully crafted advertising campaign, with slick TV spots and posters and ubiquitous sound bites.
Meanwhile, he must fend off attempts at character assassination, not to mention violence.
The outcome of Thursday's election is of vital importance to the Bush administration, which has long pressed for inclusion of the minority Sunni population in the political process as a means to sap strength from the Sunni-driven insurgency and keep the country together.
"He probably is the most visible representative" of secular, middle-class Iraqis, said Wayne White, a former Iraq analyst for the State Department now with the Middle East Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington. "That element in Iraqi society ... is perhaps the most important societal glue that potentially could help prevent Iraq's effective breakup. As a result, his fate could be an interesting bellwether as to how well all this is going to turn out in the end."
