Dr Ibrahim al-Eshaiker al-Jaafari (ابراهيم الاشيقر 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-Eshaiker ( ابراهيم الاشيقر )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. His five children remain in Britain.
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 June 1, 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. He is brother-in-law of the Shia Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani who backed the UIA.
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 appointed as Prime Minister on 7 April 2005, following the election of a Presidency Council the day before.
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 Sistani and Moqtada al-Sadr, and al-Dawa has been the by far most popular political party.
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