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Iraq’s elections
commission announced the final results for the
December 15 elections on Friday, giving a Shia
Islamist coalition just under half the seats in the
country’s first permanent postwar parliament.
Disputes both inside the Shia-led United Iraqi
Alliance and between ethnic and sectarian groups,
however, mean that the formation of a government is
probably weeks, if not months, away.
Results may also be subject to appeal over the next
few days. But as Iraqi elections officials have been
checking and cross-checking allegations of
irregularities for over a month it is unlikely that
the count will be significantly altered.
In Friday’s results the UIA took 128 seats of 275 –
roughly what was forecast from preliminary counts
after the election but fewer than the 146 seats won
in the January poll.
In an indication that Iraqi voters cast ballots
largely along ethnic and sectarian lines, a Kurdish
alliance took 53 seats and two predominantly Sunni
Arab groupings, the Islamist-leaning Iraqi Consensus
Front and the more nationalist Iraqi National
Dialogue Front, took 44 and 11 seats respectively.
The list of Iyad Allawi, the secular Shia former
prime minister, took only 25 seats, underlining the
weakness of cross-sectarian groups and independents.
The coalition led by another secular-leaning Shia,
Ahmed Chalabi, did not take a single seat.
The results leave the UIA 56 seats short of the
two-thirds majority it needs to begin the formation
of a government, a gap it should bridge easily if it
were to reach an accord with its old coalition
partner, the Kurdistan Alliance.
However, most politicians pay at least lip service
to the need for a coalition government bringing in
all ethnic and sectarian groups, particularly the
Sunni, who make up the bulk of the insurgency. “The
UIA and the Kurds could form a government but in
this period we have no interest in doing this and
are leaning more towards a national unity
government,” says Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq’s foreign
minister.
The only slight dilution in the UIA’s share is a
disappointment to the US and its allies, who had
hoped for a less sectarian outcome and a better
performance by Mr Allawi’s secular forces.
More promising for Iraq and the US, however, is the
participation of Sunni Arabs in the vote and the
results achieved. Bringing the Sunni into the
political process has been a key objective as the US
seeks to widen divisions between the broader pool
of nationalist insurgents and hardcore jihadis.
Sunni Arabs dismissed early indications of the UIA’s
sweep as the result of mass fraud and voter
intimidation and at one point threatened to boycott
parliament. But though many still maintain that the
election was rigged, Sunni politicians have been
less confrontational of late, perhaps bolstered by
US pressure on the UIA to give them a stake in
Iraq’s new political system.
The announcement of the final results paves the way
for intensive horse-trading within the UIA to pick a
prime minister, followed by what promises to be
difficult power-sharing talks to establish a
cabinet. After January’s elections it took nearly
three months for the Shia and Kurds to agree on who
would hold key posts in the next government. The
December elections have added two new factions to
the power-sharing equation: the Sunni and the
movement led by radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr,
whose grassroots strength is thought to have
contributed heavily to the UIA’s victory.
Part of the new government’s mission will be to
revisit the Iraqi constitution and to speed the
build-up of Iraqi security forces as the US begins
to draw down troops.
So there is plenty of scope for a worsening of
sectarian tensions over the next few months as Sunni
Arabs, who were once the dominant power, come to
terms with their minority status in government but
seek important changes to the constitution.
Whereas the Kurds enjoy virtual independence in
their northern self-rule zone and have less of a
stake in the division of power in the centre, the
Shia and the Sunni each fear the other group’s
control over posts such as those at the interior
ministry, which the Sunni have accused of
assassinating members of their community.
In comments that raised alarm in the Sunni
community, UIA leader Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim recently
said there was likely to be no compromise on the
federal constitution, which Sunni fear will deprive
them of oil revenues and open the door to Iranian
domination of the south.
Kurdish parties have already agreed that Jalal
Talabani, the current president and head of the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, will remain their
candidate for the presidency. So the most urgent
issue is for the UIA to agree on a prime minister.
But the two main components of the UIA have each
insisted on its candidate for the post, with Daawa
favouring incumbent Ibrahim al-Jaafari, and the
Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri)
championing Adel Abdel-Mehdi, current deputy prime
minister.
The US and many Iraqi politicians had hoped the
government’s poor performance would doom Mr
Jaafari’s chance of returning. Mr Abdel-Mehdi, an
economist and moderate official within Sciri, seemed
the most likely candidate before the elections.
But officials in Baghdad say the prime minister has
been arguing that the UIA’s election results are an
endorsement of his performance. Mr Jaafari has been
courting Kurdish leaders and he has the support of
Mr Sadr. “Jaafari is working a lot, publicly and
behind the scenes, so he’s acting as if he’s there
to stay,” says one official.
With Daawa and Sciri’s positions entrenched,
officials say the intervention of Grand Ayatollah
Ali Sistani, Iraq’s high-ranking Shia cleric, may be
needed, and that could end up producing a third,
perhaps more independent, Shia candidate.
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