by Kamal Taha
BAGHDAD, Aug 18 (AFP) - A single list of candidates for Iraq`s interim legislature was elected by default Wednesday after a rival list was withdrawn for failing to adhere to preset criteria, an official source said.
Ismail Zayer, chief editor of a leading Baghdad daily, announced that he had withdrawn his list of candidates for "procedural reasons", sparking protests from delegates.
The 81 candidates on the first list were voted onto the new council alongside former members of the defunct Governing Council, in a process earlier dogged by accusations the big political parties had hijacked the event.
Fomer Governing Council spokesman Hamid Kifaey told AFP the elected list had been worked on for nearly three months by the main parties already represented in the interim government.
"We only worked on our list for 24 hours, we had no chance," he said.
Presiding judge Ahmed al-Arargji had ordered delegates to alter both lists of candidates because 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 was delayed from Tuesday, amid a barrage of accusations from some 450 delegates that the main political parties had hijacked the process.
Included on the aborted list, was the name of Abdulkahdim Badr, declared a representative of radical Shiite militia leader Moqtada Sadr`s group.
Sadr 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.
An aide to the cleric later sad he had accepted the peace plan.
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.
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 were 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.
"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.
The national council is to advise the caretaker government as it maps out the path to elections scheduled for January.