BAGHDAD — The Shiite Muslim movement loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada Sadr may seem an unlikely standard-bearer for democracy in the new Iraq.
It owes fealty to a leader whose stature derives from his religious lineage. It boycotted Iraq's first democratic election. And its Mahdi Army militia was held responsible for much of the mayhem that reigned a few years back.
But on Friday, Sadr loyalists held Iraq's first primary election to choose candidates for January's crucial nationwide vote.
The exercise came in response to an instruction from Sadr, who has been living the life of a virtual recluse in the Iranian city of Qom since 2007. He is reported to be studying to become an ayatollah, and has vowed not to return to Iraq until the last of the American "occupiers" has left. Yet his influence over his followers remains intact.
At a polling station in the movement's stronghold of Sadr City, throngs of people, many of them noisily chanting the cleric's name, lined up to cast ballots for one of 329 candidates for slots on the pro-Sadr slate in Baghdad province.
"I voted because Sayed Muqtada Sadr ordered me to," said Khadamiya Jawad, 34, after writing her candidate's name on a ballot paper in a covered booth and dipping her finger in indelible ink. "And also because I want to choose my own representative."
Signs proclaiming "The Primary Election for the Sadrist Movement" hung on the walls alongside lists of the candidates' names and portraits of Sadr. A loudspeaker broadcast slogans -- "Yes, Yes to Righteousness. No, No to Dishonesty" -- intended to remind voters that the primary elevated the movement above other political parties, which select their candidates behind closed doors.
"For other political movements, a primary is only an idea, not a principle, because they are too concerned with their own interests," said Sheikh Salman Faraji, the cleric overseeing the poll. "But the Sadrist movement is not about politics, it is about people. The will of the people is above everything."
About 400 polling stations and more than 800 candidates across Iraq participated, and a central committee will vet the results and decide on a final list of candidates. The number of candidates to be chosen is not known yet, because Iraqi legislators still have not agreed on the details of the January elections.
But it is clear that the Sadr movement intends to embrace the upcoming national vote, after adopting a decidedly ambivalent attitude to elections in 2005 and in January.
