BAGHDAD, Iraq – In a darkened hall, candidates for Iraq’s main Shiite party sit listening to a turbaned cleric speaking into a microphone. They are being told how to campaign for the election without getting killed.

The instructions are simple – avoid public places and do not reveal your identity, the cleric advised. Most candidates should stay at home as much as possible, he added.

At the election headquarters of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or Sciri, few underestimate the dangers of the election – 20 Sciri employees have been killed in recent months. But equal to the fear is the utter certainty among officials that Sciri, the largest party on the Shiite list which is expected to dominate next week’s election, will be at the heart of government.

Hope, fear, and a whiff of arrogance: Such are the mood swings inside Sciri headquarters. For a party that was set up in Iran in the 1980s to promulgate Islamic revolution in Iraq but now says it upholds secular values, dealing with the changing winds of fortune have become part of a careful political act.

Not only does the list containing Sciri have the largest Shiite parties, it also has the approval of the most revered Shiite spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Mr. Imarah insists that the involvement of Ayatollah Sistani in the election does not undermine the secular platform on which Sciri and other Shiite parties are standing. “We represent a very broad front,” he insisted.

However, many outside the Shiite south believe Sciri is only playing with secularism. Once in power the mask will fall away and the party will return to its core set of Islamic beliefs, they say.

Many fear that Ayatollah Sistani will be supplanted in the organization by clerics with closer ties to Iran. Some of those concerns were put to the test last week by a rare press conference organized by Mr. Imarah at Sciri headquarters – a mansion formerly owned by Saddam’s henchman Tariq Aziz – for leading politicians from the United Iraqi Alliance.

These are the men likely to form Iraq’s future government: The head of the large Shiite Dawa party, Ibrahim al-Jaafari; Ahmed Chalabi, the former Pentagon favorite; and a Sunni tribal leader from Mosul, Sheik Farnaz al-Jabbar. It was a visible attempt to appeal across the political spectrum.

Mr. Jaafari spoke about his confidence that all Iraqis would take part in the election, and emphasized the need for consensus. Mr. Imarah was delighted with the conference, attended by several Arabic TV channels. “It’s very hard to get our message out to people beyond our organization at the moment, which is why speaking on television is so important,” he said.

He was also scheduled to speak on a local Iraqi TV network later, before heading down to Basra for further campaigning “The violence doesn’t scare me, and I don’t think it will scare away Iraqis from voting for us,” he said.

As he prepared to leave, he paused. He had described himself as a press officer for Sciri. He leant across and whispered: “Actually I’m the campaign manager, but that’s a secret.”