Carrying red flags and posters of Karl Marx, hundreds of Iraqi communists marched Tuesday in Baghdad for May Day, convinced their joint list with Shiite leader Muqtada Sadr can win this month's election.

In a joyful procession, demonstrators also waved the blue flags of their electoral list and chanted slogans like "Listen to the will of the people: reform and the end of corruption" and "The workers are the spearhead of the country".

For the first time in Iraq's history the black turban of Shiite clerics, who claim to direct descendents of Prophet Mohammad, has allied with the hammer and sickle of secular communists in a joint list for the May 12 parliamentary polls.

The Marching Towards Reform alliance is made up of six mostly secular groups, including Iraq's communist party and Istaqma, a party of technocrats backed by Muqtada Sadr, who suspended his Ahrar bloc and called on his 34 deputies not to run in the polls.

"It's not unrealistic that our joint list gets 40 deputies and is in the lead. The feedback we receive is very positive," Raed Fahmi, leader of the Iraq's Communist Party which currently has one representative in parliament, told AFP.

The joint list has 623 candidates across the country, with the exception of Kurdistan's three provinces and Kirkuk.

Gray-haired and smiling, 58-year-old Jassem al-Hilfi thinks "there will be a surprise" at this year's polls.

"The list that comes in first could perhaps be us," said the communist organiser of major anti-corruption protests launched in the summer of 2015.

His calculation is simple. In the 2014 elections, Shiite religious parties won 104 seats.

But "today, they are divided into four, so no one will be able to surpass us if we get 40 seats, which is quite possible since the Sadrists already have 34 seats on their own".

If the joint list wins, "we will ask to form a government with other components, and if they refuse to join us, we will be the main opposition force against the corrupt," added Hilfi.

Although he is optimistic, Hilfi is not blind to the difficulties Sadr faces.

"Muqtada Sadr is under tremendous pressure from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, countries... who see us as godless," he said.

Despite the pressure, Hilfi is confident that Sadr has the support of Shiite spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

"We are expecting a statement from the Ayatollah against corruption," said Hilfi, which would a major boost for their reform-oriented party.

Iraqi man uses campaign fever to win back his sweetheart
Baghdad (AFP) May 1, 2018 - Taking advantage of nation-wide elections, one Iraqi man has emptied his pockets to panel Baghdad with posters to campaign for love and win back his ex-fiancee.

"I've loved this women for two years. We were engaged and planned on getting married... but before the wedding, people claimed that I had cheated on her," said Haidouz, using a pseudonym.

"We argued and the issue grew when her family got involved, and our relationship fell apart."

Brokenhearted, Haidouz found unexpected inspiration in the plethora of campaign posters hung across the city in the lead up to local and parliamentary elections on May 12.

"I had the idea to take advantage of it. Not to run for election, but only to declare my love," the 32-year-old electrical engineer said.

He created an "electoral list" and aptly called it "Love and Loyalty", composing a poem for Assouz, a pseudonym for his fiancee.

"You are not only a woman, you are my homeland," he wrote

As for the "candidates" on his newly created list, Haidouz is number two and his fiancee is number one.

Haidouz drained his savings of $1,700 (1,400 euros) and even borrowed from friends to carry out his campaign to win back "Assouz".

With the help of a friend, he spent three nights erecting 65 campaign posters across his fiancee's neighbourhood and along the main roads of the capital.

But it all seems to have been in vain.

Passersby asked him if the posters were for a new TV drama set to air during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan -- prime time for television viewers in the Arab world -- which begins in mid-May this year.

Assouz's family tore down the posters in their neighbourhood, while the love of his life never contacted him and one of her brothers has demanded that he take the rest down.

Heartbroken two-times over now, Haidouz still hasn't given up.

"I haven't lost hope. I'm still waiting for her answer."

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