Baghdad - Followers of Iraqi Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr went to the polls on Friday for a primary vote to choose candidates for the general election due in January.

"I consider this primary election as a step towards liberating Iraq politically," the nationalist cleric said in a statement.

"If elections are the door to independence, then we must obey and take part. So, be united and raise your voices to prove to everyone that Iraq is free," he said.

As the Iraqi parliament is still debating open or closed lists for the elections, the Sadrist Movement - which espouses a mixture of Shiite Islamist and Iraqi nationalist positions - has said it is holding the primary so that Sadrists will make sure that their candidates, even in a closed-list system, have a public approval.

Closed-list proportional representation is an electoral system whereby the public votes only for parties as a whole, and not for the individuals elected.

Sadrists are calling on the parliament to pass an open-list system and have threatened to withdraw from January's elections if a closed-list system is chosen. The parliament is expected to pass the electoral law on Monday.

"The turnout in the very first hours is very encouraging, and more people are coming to vote in complete freedom," said Asmaa al-Musawi, a senior Sadrist member.

"There is high security near the polls. Forces from the ministries of Defence and Interior are deployed to protect the voters and the ballots," she added.

Although the Independent High Electoral Commission states that parliamentary candidates should be over 30 years old, with basic education certificate, Sadrists said that their candidates must have a college degree, be at least 35 years old and and never worked with the US, whom the Sadrists refer to as the occupiers.

Ahmed Abu Zahra, a 44-year-old civil servant, said that the election was organized "as if we were voting in the Parliamentary elections."

"I voted today in al-Kadhimiya district. It is a democratic procedure so that we can choose our candidates in the next election with a free will," added Abu Zahra.

In August, the Sadrist movement joined the Iraqi National Alliance (INA), a new alliance to replace the once-powerful Shiite coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), which swept the 2005 Iraqi general election. The new grouping consists of at least ten Shiite political powers headed by the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC).

Sadrists took part in the 2005 vote as part of the UIA and got 30 seats in the parliament and 6 ministers. However, in 2007 they withdrew from the alliance and became an opposition movement inside the parliament.(dpa)