Secondly there is former minister of state for security and current MP Shirwan al-Waeli with list 284. It will be running in his home province of Dhi Qar only after initial negotiations to have him as part of the Askari-Zurfi group appear to have failed.
Thirdly there is minister of state Safa al-Din al-Safi, running list 201 in his own hometown Basra as well as in Wasit. It seems more detached from Maliki than one might expect given Safi’s sometimes key role in fixing problems for Maliki in the past. Safi has some links to the religious leadership in Najaf whose calls for “change” have been interpreted as a hint that a shakeup of the current government is needed.
Fourthly there is Jawad Kazim al-Buzuni and list 238 running in Basra, Dhi Qar, Wasit, Babel and Baghdad. Apart from its outspoken, sometimes federalist key figure from Basra, the list comprises mostly academics with relatively low profiles.
While the above statistics of defections are remarkable, equally important is perhaps the fact of relative dissipation – geographically and organizationally alike. Perhaps the bigger challenge to Maliki consists of those MPs who did not start their own new list but instead jumped to an existing enemy: Muwatin, dominated by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) and Ammar al-Hakim. They include at least the following: Janan Abd al-Jabbar Yasin (Basra), Hussein al-Assadi (Basra), Ali Kurdi al-Husseini (Karbala; now on Muwatin list in Baghdad), Manal Hamid al-Musawi (Karbala), and Ahmad Habib al-Abbasi (Babel).
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