Najaf, Iraq ? In this holy Shiite city, enthusiasm is building for an election that Iraq’s Shiite majority hopes will end centuries of political marginalization.

Far from the violence and intimidation that threaten to deter voters in the Sunni heartland, across the mostly Shiite south Iraqis are eagerly anticipating what they see as a chance to shape their destiny for the first time in history.

“We will all go together, hand in hand to vote, because this election will mean an end to the suffering of our people,” said Mohammed Sharif, who was selling trinkets Saturday at a stall outside the gold-domed Imam Ali mosque, Shiite Islam’s holiest shrine.

Najaf’s enthusiasm for the election is shared by many Shiites across the south.

“This will be the most important moment of my life,” said Salem Taqih, who spent 10 years in prison in Basra for organizing opposition to Saddam Hussein’s regime and now heads an association representing former political prisoners.

“With this election, we will make sure that the misery of our people will never be repeated again.”

Taqih is a supporter of the Dawa Islamiyah Party, one of the once-outlawed Shiite opposition parties hoping to move to the center stage of Iraqi politics.

Dawa is one of the main Shiite parties grouped under the auspices of revered Shiite religious leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, whose implicit endorsement of the United Iraqi Alliance, as the coalition is known, is expected to give it a huge boost at the polls.

Al-Sistani isn’t a candidate, and he has traditionally steered clear of politics. It is a reflection of the importance of this vote for Iraqi Shiites, his followers say, that he has stepped into the political fray for this election, allowing his portrait to be used to promote the United Iraqi Alliance’s campaign and issuing a fatwa, a religious order, declaring it “the religious duty” of every Shiite to vote.

The alliance’s election posters, featuring a burning candle, the stern face of the white-bearded al-Sistani and the coalition’s number on the ballot, 169, dominate across the south. They are plastered on the walls of government buildings, police stations and the schools that will serve as polling stations.

“You have to vote for 169, otherwise God will be angry,” said one leaflet being distributed by the alliance in Basra.

Secular parties attempting to compete against the deluge of religious imagery say they are disadvantaged by what they regard as an unfair exploitation of the reverence in which al-Sistani is held by most ordinary Shiites.

“The Shiite parties will win because they are using religion to persuade simple, ill-educated people,” said Ahmed Khubair, the deputy secretary of Iraq’s Communist Party in Basra. “They will vote for Shiite parties because al-Sistani said they must.”

The strategy may backfire; not all of Iraq’s 15 million Shiites want their new government to have religious overtones, and there are indications that a sizable number of Shiites may cast ballots for secular parties.

There are also deep divisions within the Shiite coalition. Leaders of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the coalition’s main party, spent much of the Saddam era in exile in Iran, and many Shiites suspect the group maintains close ties to Iran. Followers of renegade Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who led a bloody revolt against U.S. forces last year, are threatening to boycott the vote, in part because of bitter rivalries with the Supreme Council.