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Press TV has interviewed Sa’ad al-Muttalibi, from the State of Law Coalition from Baghdad, to discuss Iarqi voters' successful participation in nationwide parliamentary elections.

Press TV: Let me first get a sense from you. Obviously it goes without saying that congratulations should be in place for Iraq and Iraqis for their participation and also for al-Maliki government for providing security. What is your initial reaction about the successful turnout?

Muttalibi: I think it was the perfect answer from the people of Iraq to the challenges that facing the country. Everybody who were opposing the elections and were opposing the present government spoke of conspiracies that Mr. al-Maliki will force state of emergency and will postpone elections because of the deteriorating security environment within Anbar province.

Many people thought that al-Qaeda will target the voters and actually they did. Two days before the national elections, there were spike in attacks against voting stations. But the determination of the people I think proved that they presented their full trust within the government and their trust within Mr. al-Maliki and the coalition, State of Law and it was a slap as Mr. al-Maliki said to terrorists and those who represent the terrorists politically here in Iraq. Also to the regional countries that are afraid of feeling the democracy as they call it the democratic virus that may be contagious and may reach the countries.

Therefore, I think it’s fair to say that the elections were free, fair, transparent with one thousand two hundred plus international monitors, plus the monitors from the Arab League, plus the local independent monitors.

So the number of monitors were extremely high and all these organizations including the United Nations and the European Union and the Arab League all stated that the elections were fair, just and transparent and without any security incident and must take into consideration that this election was the first election without the presence of occupying American forces. So, all security issues were held by Iraqi personnel which manage very well to preserve the life of voters and preserve the political poses and the voting procedure altogether.

Press TV: let’s dig in a little deeper here Sa’ad al-Muttalibi. You talked about how there’re some regional countries that would not want obviously democracy to prevail in Iraq. I’d like you to get specific either yourself saying it or what Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said who those regional countries are. And why is that run-up to these elections we saw the violence, sponsored or financed or supported by some of these regional countries but yet come election day that didn’t happen. What was different this time around in terms of making this be a successful election?

Muttalibi: Well, as Christopher Hill, the ex-Ambassador to Bagdad, stated, then followed by Jeffrey Feltman, the Undersecretary for State in the United States also stated that Saudi Arabia was involved in meddling in the internal affairs of Baghdad and supporting terrorism and supporting armed groups within Iraq.

So that is not us saying this information. This is the information come from the United States while Mr. Christopher Hill was an ambassador here in Baghdad. With the resources of the United States that they have over surveillance and information they gather around the world. So, they were very clear in the involvement of Saudi Arabia in Iraq.

We believe that Saudi Arabia never stopped meddling in the affairs of Iraq. Sometimes they provide financial aids to certain political groups here in Iraq: Sunni and Shia sometimes. Sometimes they provide ammunition and military hardware as we have confiscated in the deserts in Iraq. Saudi Arabian military hardware that actually we captured here in Iraq and the proof and pictures of those ammunitions and hardware were presented to the United Nations.

So, there is a damning evidence of Saudi Arabian intervention here in Iraq. Now with closeness of the election they tried in many ways to push their supporters or those Iraqi politicians that are closely linked to Saudi Arabia, push them to try in many ways to harm the reputation of Iraq or the Prime Minister or State of Law or the political poses in general.

Unfortunately for them the people of Iraq prevailed and they showed that the people showed the solidarity and they showed an excellent resolve in moving forward to a creating a change from a consensual government or consensual parliament or consensual agreement for the government and a wide power-sharing into a majority government which has become a public demand. Everybody in Iraq today voted for, those who voted for State of Law voted for a majority government away from power-sharing and away from sectarian divide of the nation.

Press TV: And that point is what I wanted to ask from you. Why is that Nouri al-Maliki decided for that? He mentioned he’ll eliminate, for example, as you mentioned this sectarianism for example. But is it also in terms of ratio, we can tell us, more so because you have regional country like Saudi Arabia, for example, pushing their influence to some of the law makers in the various groups perhaps that are involved?

Muttalibi: The problem with the power-sharing regime that we had, that regime promoted corruption because in power-sharing the parliament was mirrored, represented within the government. So a minister, every minister came from a political block within the parliament that protected that minister. So any accusations of corruption were, we couldn’t deal with and weren’t dealt with within the parliament. No monitoring from the parliament on those ministers who many of them proved to be corrupt, inefficient and shouldn’t be ministers in the first place.

Those parties that received their information or their instructions from Saudi Arabia, I’ll give you an example. Last election, 2010, in State of Law, we thought the best way to go forward is to have an alliance between State of Law and Iraqiye which Iraqiye is a Sunni block. We saw a number of reasonable politicians within that block and within our estimation we thought that it would be possible to have a limited power-sharing agreement with them and create a limited coalition government.

Unfortunately the Saudi element within Iraqiye represented at the time by the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) which is the Sunni block within Iraqiye opposed any form of agreement between State of Law and Iraqiye and make sure that the agreement was very wide and all elements of the country were represented, all political entities of the nation were represented within the government. Therefore, no way we could fight corruption or even terrorism.

Many of those eventually were accused of terrorism and some of them tried like Tariq al-Hashemi, the ex-Deputy of Iraq who is very closely linked to Saudi Arabia with constant visit to Saudi Arabia at the time probably once a month he would go to Saudi Arabia present a report of what is happening in Iraq. Some other politicians form IIP were the same with very very close link to Saudi Arabia.

The problem with those politicians they created in Iraq a fertile ground for regional intervention in Iraq. That created a problem in itself. That made the question of resolving Iraqi issues and regional problems not a local Iraqi problem. If those did not create this fertile ground, we could have entered into negotiation among Iraqis as Iraqi nationals and resolve their problems but with the presence of such a fertile ground that made a problem.
 
Press TV: Obviously a country not mentioned in this debate so far has been Iran. A viewer’s comments did mention that. My question to you is that you talk about Iran but when you put it into the equation of Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq, do you think that Saudi Arabia is trying to penetrate Iraq in order to stop Iran from being obviously a powerful country in the region or is it because it doesn’t want democracy to spread or combination of both?

Muttalibi: I think Saudis are using a soft point which Americans presented a few years back. I so recall and many people would recall the axis of evil that was presented by [George] Bush. Unfortunately the Saudis took this issue dear too hot and built on that idea to make sure that there is a definite sectarian divide and that sectarian divide would split the Islamic nation; doing the Americans and the Crusaders a favor that they failed to so in a thousand years to spit the Arab Islamic world into Shias and Sunnis.

This is something that we lived in Iraq for over a thousand years between a multi-sect Iraqi society. We have Sunnis we have Shias we have intermarriages. We have tribes half of them Sunnis half of them Shia and we live peacefully for a thousand years. It is true Saddam [Hussein] used sectarian in a horrible way....