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A panel of Iraqi judges has reportedly upheld the decision to bar two prominent Sunni members of parliament from contesting in general elections scheduled for March 7.
The endorsement of the ban against Saleh al-Mutlaq and Dhafir al-Ani, as election campaigning officially got under way on Friday, is likely to raise tensions between the Shia-led government and Sunni Iraqis, who say they are being marginalized.
The ruling on al-Mutlaq and al-Ani were said to be part of a judicial review of about 500 candidates, banned last month because of suspected ties to Saddam Hussein's Baath party.
The panel of seven judges, reviewing appeals filed by many of the banned candidates, was expected to finish its work by Friday.
But officials from the Accountability and Justice Committee, which drew up the candidate blacklist, said on Thursday night that 99 of the appeals, including those of al-Mutlaq and al-Ani, had already been rejected.
"The judicial panel only authorized 28 [of the banned candidates] to participate in the elections," Ali al-Mahmud, a spokesman for the committee, told AFP news agency.
Both al-Ani and al-Mutlaq, however, say they had not been officially informed about the decision and an election commission spokesperson told Al Jazeera that they had yet to receive an order from the court disqualifying the two.
Critical poll
An appeals court had last week suspended the ban imposed on the candidates, saying that reviewing their files would take some time, and that they should be allowed to stand for election in the meantime.
However, under heavy political pressure, judges agreed to complete all the reviews by the end of this week.
Since it was compiled last month, the candidate blacklist has sparked large-scale protests by pro- and anti-Baath demonstrators across Iraq. Some have threatened to boycott the vote if the blacklisted candidates are not allowed to run.
Iraq's Shia-led government has pushed hard to keep Saddam-era officials out of public offices and security forces, continuing a policy initiated by Washington shortly after the 2003 US-led invasion.
Many Sunnis believe the policy went too far, penalizing innocent people who had to join the Baath Party to advance in their chosen careers.
The March poll, Iraq's second parliamentary vote post-Saddam, comes at a critical juncture for the country, which is trying to put years of war behind it and jumpstart its economy with a raft of new oil deals.
More than 100,000 US troops remain in Iraq, but with major combat forces due to pull out by August, that number would drop to 50,000.
PHOTO CAPTION
An Iraqi man sorts election campaign posters stacked on a Baghdad street.
Al-Jazeera
