Not that they already weren’t, as Dawa party candidate and current Prime Minister Ibraham al-Jaafari only won by a single vote within the UIA due to backing by the Sadrists, but the barrier for removing him has been broken as several independent politicians have broken with the alliance and said that someone else should be chosen for the position. That’s the big news over the weekend.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 1 ???????? A senior member of the dominant Shiite bloc called on Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari on Saturday to drop his campaign to keep his post, becoming the first Shiite political leader to publicly break ranks in the debate over Iraq’s top executive.

Mr. Jaafari won the nomination last month by one vote, and has since struggled to find enough support to overcome widespread, multipartisan opposition.

Meanwhile, American pressure on Iraqi political leaders to end the bitter stalemate and forge a new government has been intensifying. Earlier this week, President Bush tacitly encouraged members of Congress to deliver strong warnings to deadlocked leaders, including the message that if they fail, the schedule for withdrawing American troops could be sped up.

American and Iraqi officials say that delays in the process of creating a government have created a fertile environment for lawlessness, and the dissenting Shiite leader, Kassim Daoud, said a sense of responsibility to end the gridlock had compelled him to speak out.

“We all hope that he will respond because we know that he is a statesman and he will take the country’s best interest into consideration,” Mr. Daoud, who would be a possible candidate for the post, said Saturday in a brief telephone interview.

Iraq has been trapped in weeks of political deadlock due to tit-for-tat killings by militias on both sides of the sectarian divide. But it is important to understand that it is the political process itself to some degree that is fuelling these killings but must nevertheless continue.

The religious Shia UIA, which is the largest bloc in parliament, nominated Ibraham al-Jaafari as the candidate for prime minister. Being the largest bloc, they have the right to do so, but in order for him to win the position he must be approved by 66% vote by the entire assembly. Essentially this means that even though one bloc gets to pick the candidate, the choice must be agreeable to the rest of the Iraqi population at large so that one group does not dominate all the others.

However, every other party in parliament, including the two main Sunni parties, the Kurdish alliance, and the secular multi-confessional party led by Allawi disagree with Jaafari’s candidacy. Even more than that, the UIA faces splintering within its own party as Jaafari, who hails from the Dawa party, only won by a single vote due to the backing of the fundamentalist Sadrists. The SCIRI’s candidate for the UIA nomination, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, is popular with that half of alliance, including the many independents and smaller parties that make it up. He is also viewed as a moderate and a very acceptable choice for the premiership by the Sunni, Kurd, and secular blocs.

The sectarian killings taking place on behalf of the Sadrists and other UIA affiliated militias are, in a sense, a threat to the others that Jaafari will become prime minister whether they like it or not. They want to keep power and will do anything it takes to keep it. This is why they have called the new Sunni-Kurd-secular umbrella group to bloc Jaafari’s nomination a coup. They have also asserted it to be Jaafari’s “right” to govern simply because they nominated him. This is why they no longer support America’s presence in the country — despite formerly being its staunchest supporters — because America no longer supports their monopoly on government.

It is the fundamentalist branch of the UIA itself that has caused the political gridlock, but it is the more nationalist SCIRI, the smaller parties, and the independents who are finally speaking out and may be ready to break with the UIA in order to support an Abdul-Mahdi candidacy for the premiership. They know it is no longer in their interests to support an alliance in which they do not benefit. They are seeing that working with the Sunnis, Kurds, and secular to form a national unity government will not only strengthen the country, but isolate pro-Iranian elements within the Shia political elite.

I predicted this would happen last month and even before that. But at that time I warned you all to watch for this to happen. It’s happening. Now watch as Jaafari’s calls for Shia unity go unheard as real political pluralism and cooperation begin to unfold. The only problem now is what the isolated fundamentalist Shia will do with their militias once they lose power.