Ibrahim al-Jaafari
Dr Ibrahim al-َAshaiqir al-Jaafari (Arabic: إبراهيم الأشيقر الجعفري) (born 1947) is the new Prime Minister of Iraq in the Iraqi Transitional Government following the elections of January 2005. He is a Shiite and was previously one of the two vice-presidents of Iraq under the Iraqi Interim Government in 2004, and the main spokesman for the Islamic Dawa Party in Iraq.
He was born Ibrahim al-Ashaiqir (إبراهيم الأشيقر) in Karbala and was educated at Mosul university as a medical doctor. He joined the Islamic Dawa Party in 1968. Upon graduation from school in 1974 he worked actively for the party in Iraq until the Ba'athist government began a violent crackdown on the group. He left for Iran in 1980 and became involved in the anti-Saddam movement there. He moved to London in 1989 where he became the al-Dawa spokesman in the UK and an important participant in the wider anti-Saddam movement.
After the 2003 invasion of Iraq he quickly returned to the country. He was picked in July 2003 as member of the U.S.-backed Iraq Interim Governing Council, and served as its first chairman and Iraq's first post-Saddam interim president for one month. On 1 June 2004, he was selected to be one of the two vice-presidents in the new Iraqi government.
He brought al-Dawa into the United Iraqi Alliance coalition of Shi'ite parties and was second on the party's list after SCIRI leader Abdel-Aziz Hakim.
Following the 2005 Iraqi elections the strength of the UIA in the parliament made him a likely candidate to become the nation's new Prime Minister. Only Ahmed Chalabi challenged him for the position. Chalabi later dropped out of the race, being less than a favourite for a majority of the parties in the UIA, partly tainted by his former relationship with the US, thus leaving al-Jaafari unchallenged to become the alliance's candidate for the post. He was designated as Prime Minister on 7 April 2005, following the election of a Presidency Council the day before. After a long period of negotiations aimed at establishing a broad-based government, he and his cabinet were finally approved by the National Assembly of Iraq on 28 April.
In opinion polls since the invasion, al-Jafaari has fairly consistently had the highest approval ratings of any politician, and the highest of any public figure after Ali al-Sistani and Moqtada al-Sadr, and al-Dawa has been, by far, the most popular political party.
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