The Candidate

So when Iraqis go to their polling places next week, will they vote their admiration for Allawi's tough image or their dismay with his weak performance? Will they want his strong American backing or reject him as a U.S. puppet? "He's smart, he's a great infighter, he has money, and he's got the U.S.," says an important secular leader. "It probably won't be enough." Allawi's best chance to retain power after Jan. 30 is if the strange bedfellows who make up the united Shi'ite list, which probably will win the most votes, can't bear to accept another party's favorite. But that may be a long shot too. Although the next Prime Minister will be chosen in a smoke-filled room once the voters show the power brokers how strong each is, the members of the Shi'ite list, says Adnan Pachachi, the secular Sunni leader who turned down the presidency in June, "will want one of their own." Yet only someone wholly unaware of Iraq's byzantine politics would completely count Allawi out for good. After all, he's already come back once from political exile to run Iraq. --With reporting by Christopher Allbritton and the Iraqi staff/Baghdad; Brian Bennett, Timothy J. Burger and Elaine Shannon/Washington; and Helen Gibson/ London