Sadrists choose candidates for Iraq parliamentary poll

Large crowds of supporters of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr voted on Friday to select candidates to run in Iraq's election in January, in the first such vote since the fall of Saddam.

The bloc, which has 30 MPs in parliament, is allied with the Shiite-dominated Iraqi National Alliance, which will face off against Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition in the election.

Sadrist officials said more than one and a half million people cast their ballots in the primaries, though the figure could not be independently verified.

The results will be announced "in two or three days' time," according to Hazim al-Araji, the Sadrist movement's chief in the northern Baghdad neighbourhood of Kadhimiyah, site of a major Shiite shrine.

"The aim of this exercise is to engender in people loyalty to parliament," he said.

The primaries are the first of their kind in Iraq, around six and a half years after dictator Saddam Hussein was ousted by a US-led invasion.

"They are a message and an appeal to other political parties to follow our example and let the Iraqi people choose their representatives," said Maha ad-Douri, a Sadrist MP.

The ballot was being held across the country, with the exception of the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan and the predominantly Sunni Arab provinces of Al-Anbar, in the west, and Nineveh, in the north.

"Close to 650 people are standing in the primaries, the lion's share of whom are in Baghdad," Sadrist movement spokesman Salah al-Obaidi told AFP from the Shiite holy city of Najaf, south of the capital.

"The names of candidates are listed on billboards alongside their numbers. Voters have to choose one name," he said.

Some 350 voting centres have been set up, including 120 in Baghdad, at Sadrist mosques and buildings, Obaidi said. Serving Sadrist MPs do not have to stand in the primaries, being held to find additional candidates.

In the movement's key base of Sadr City, a slum district in northern Baghdad, nine voting centres were available for electors to cast their ballots.

"We've come to participate, as requested by Moqtada al-Sadr, to choose our representatives for the coming election," Saad Jaddua Hussein, a 33-year-old worker, said after voting.

"We hope they will be able to provide basic services and improve the situation here."

Mohanned Salman, a 44-year-old engineer, said he and his family had come to vote "because we want to choose our candidates. This time, it will be the people who choose instead of letting the sheikhs impose their candidates."

The Sadrist grouping is the only one so far to be holding primaries ahead of the January 16 elections.

Sadr, said to be in his 30s, gained wide popularity among Shiites in Iraq in the months after the 2003 invasion and in 2004 when his Mahdi Army militia battled US troops in two bloody revolts.

Born into a family of prominent religious leaders, Sadr is believed to have moved to neighbouring Shiite Iran two years ago, apparently for concerns over his safety.