by Kamal Taha
BAGHDAD, Aug 18 (AFP) - Both lists of candidates for Iraq's interim legislature were declared invalid Wednesday for failing to include enough women, although representatives of Shiite militia leader Moqtada Sadr made it to the shortlist.
Some 1,300 delegates were to vote for 81 people to sit on the new council alongside former members of the defunct Governing Council, choosing from one of two lists, in a process already dogged by accusations the big political parties had hijacked the event.
Presiding judge Ahmed al-Arargji ordered delegates to alter both lists of candidates within an hour after he announced that neither contained the correct number of women.
Women had earlier voiced concern they would not get the full 25 seats allocated to them under the interim constitution adopted before the US-led occupation was formally wrapped up due to the influence of Islamist parties.
"Both lists are illegal, because each list should have 22 women. The first has only 20 and the second, six or eight less," Arargji said.
The vote had been due to take place Tuesday, but was delayed after some 450 delegates accused the main political parties of hijacking the process and complained about having to vote on closed lists.
From the first list, Arargji read out the name of Abdulkahdim Badr, declared a representative of the organisation of Sadr, who publicly boycotted the national conference, dismissing it as the product of the US-led occupation.
Defence Minister Hazem al-Shaalan earlier told Sadr's Mehdi Army to surrender within hours or face a decisive battle in the central holy city of Najaf, where fierce fighting raged Wednesday morning.
Mithal al-Alusi, a leading light in the Iraqi National Congress party of disgraced Pentagon favourite Ahmed Chalabi charged that there were numerous Sadr representatives on the list.
"There are more than 10 individuals from the organisation, including Ali al-Yasseri, editor in chief of the Hawza Natiqa newspaper. We tried to persuade them to have a role in the democratic process," he said.
Representatives from the two mainstream Shiite religious factions -- the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Dawa party -- as well as the communists, the two main Kurdish former rebel groups and the prime minister's Iraqi National Accord were all included on the list.
Nineteen of the 100 seats on the council, including three women, have already been handed to members of the defunct Governing Council created by the US-led occupation shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and including many former exiles.
According to conference rules, delegates of different leanings -- religious or secular, Kurd or Arab -- were supposed to draw up lists for the remaining 81 seats and submit them to an open vote.
Of the 81 seats on the interim legislature to be decided by the vote, 21 are to go to party members, 21 to provincial leaders, 11 to minorities, 10 to tribal figures, 10 to civil society organisations and eight to independents.
As the judge ordered the lists to be changed, other candidates complained, both at being included on the lists and at being dropped at the last minute.
"These lists and mechanisms and those responsible for them are corrupt," said Nagi al-Salihi, head of a group called Free Iraqi Civilians and Officers, livid that his name had been eliminated.
"It's impossible to build Iraq in this way ... representatives of (Prime Minister Iyad) Allawi and other officials want a parliament that just roots for them and not for the Iraqi people," he told reporters.
"If I say I'm a Sunni, they tell me to go to the head of the Sunni party. If I was a Shiite they would tell me to go to the Shiite party," he added.
The national council is to advise the caretaker government as it maps out the path to elections scheduled for January.