BAGHDAD, Feb 7 (AFP) - A few months ago Fathallah Ghazi Ismail was at the forefront of the campaign by followers of Shiite Muslim radical cleric Moqtada Sadr against the US military in Iraq.
Now he is preparing to take up a seat, as the head of the Sadr list, in the national assembly which the US occupiers helped to set up. But he says his priorities have not changed.
Ismail, 38, proudly showed off a picture of himself seated with the firebrand cleric at his modest home in Sadr City, an impoverished Shiite neighbourhood of two million in eastern Baghdad.
His success in the January 30 election came out of the blue.
In the latest vote count results released Friday, Ismail was in third place with 43,383 votes, or 1.3 percent of the 3.3 million counted up to then.
Without any campaign advertising, his National Independent Cadres and Elites list overshadowed some established political figures.
Even if he does not maintain that place up to the end of the count, the outspoken Ismail is guaranteed at least his place in the assembly that will draw up a new constitution.
During the Sadr rebellion against American forces, Ismail was a political leader in Sadr City, whipping up crowds as he toured the neighbourhood on the back of a pickup truck during the funerals of Sadr "martyrs".
Now he wears a dark suit but the message is the same. "We say no to the United States and we will fight in parliament to obtain a timetable for withdrawal."
His virtually unknown list has 180 candidates. There are 178 Shiites and two Sunnis, and 132 of them live in Sadr City.
"When Sayyed (descendant of the prophet) Sadr announced that he would not stand in the election, he did not ban the rest of us from doing so," Ismail told AFP.
Sadr said he would not take part in the election while Iraq was "under the occupation". But he did not call for a boycott which would have put him in conflict with the Shiite religious leadership.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and other clerical leaders had called on the masses to vote, as a religious duty, to reclaim Shiite power in the country.
"All the candidates on the list belong to the Sadr movement, but do not officially represent it," said Yusef al-Nassiri, an official on the central committee of the National Independent Cadres and Elites.
A spokesman for Sadr, Sheikh Abdelhadi Darraji, said Ismail and his followers were "independent" candidates.
Nassiri said the campaign had been a test of voter sentiment ahead of an election for a new government due to be held in December. The Sadr movement may then stand in its own right.
According to Nassiri, if the Sadr movement had stood in this election for a transitional parliament it would have had "a majority of the votes".
Ismail predicted his list would get eight seats in the national assembly and that it would overtake the second-placed list of interim prime minister Iyad Allawi "if the election was carried out with honesty and transparency".
But he added that this was not the case. "The United States is still occupying the country and they don't want their darling (Allawi) to lose face."
He added: "The leaders of the current government bought votes and we have complained to the election commission."
A former journalist and father of six, Ismail has nothing good to say about the interim government. He accuses them of being corrupt "agents of the United States".
"They are a copy of Saddam and worse than the Baathists," he declared.
Even the heads of the mainstream Shiite parties, such as Abdel Aziz Hakim of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the Islamic Dawa party's Ibrahim Jaafari are condemned.
Both are on the United Iraqi Alliance backed by Sistani and publicly supported by Sadr. "If Sayyed Sistani knew what was happening, he would have withdrawn his support from this list," said Ismail.
Ismail said he would be a candidate again for the December election in Sadr City. "Inshallah, the Mehdi (the 12th Shiite imam) will return and, from Sadr City, will lead the intifada (uprising) against the Americans."
02/07/2005 12:51 GMT - AFP