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Iraq PM takes lead in key province, Kurds
hold off 'Change'
14.3.2010 |
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March
14, 2010
BAGHDAD, —
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's bloc built on its
gains in Iraq's parliamentary election, initial
results showed on Sunday, as he took a comfortable
lead in the key province of Basra.
In northern Iraq, the country's Kurds also appeared
to be voting for more of the same, with the
traditional parties holding off a new challenger.
Though the figures remain far from complete,
Maliki's State of Law Alliance has taken strong
leads in two of Iraq's three biggest constituencies,
and remains ahead in six provinces overall.
The results from Iraq's second parliamentary
election since Saddam Hussein's ouster in 2003, come
less than six months ahead of a US downsizing which
will see all American combat troops leave the
country by the end of August.
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Iraqis walk past a poster of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki
in Baghdad on March 12. AFP photo |
Figures released on
Sunday also showed, however, that secular ex-premier
Iyad Allawi, a Shiite like Maliki, was ahead in the
Sunni bastion of Anbar, the fourth province in which
Allawi's Iraqiya bloc has a lead.
According to the latest results, State of Law held a
lead of around 100,000 votes in Basra, with the
Iraqi National Alliance (INA), a coalition led by
Shiite religious groups, coming in second. Iraqiya
was a distant third.
Basra, a predominantly Shiite southern province,
accounts for 24 parliamentary seats in the
325-member Council of Representatives, behind only
Baghdad, which has 70 seats, and Nineveh in northern
Iraq with 34.
Sunday's news comes a day after initial figures put
Maliki comfortably in the lead in Baghdad, with INA
and Iraqiya neck-and-neck for second place in the
election's main prize.
Along with Basra and Baghdad, State of Law was also
ahead in the southern Shiite provinces of Babil,
Najaf, Karbala and Muthanna, while INA leads in
Maysan and Diwaniyah, also mostly Shiite southern
provinces.
Iraq's election commission announced on Sunday that
Iraqiya had a strong lead in Anbar, Iraq's biggest
province by geography and the centre of a bloody
insurgency in the early years of the US-led
occupation.
Elsewhere, Iraqiya leads in Nineveh and the mostly
Sunni central provinces of Diyala and Salaheddin.
Iraq's proportional representation electoral system
makes it unlikely that any single grouping will
clinch the 163 seats needed to form a government on
its own, and analysts expect protracted coalition
building.
Meanwhile, Kurdistania, an alliance of the Kurdish
autonomous region's two long-dominant parties, held
off a new challenger in the northern Iraqi province
of Dohuk,www.ekurd.netin
the early results.
Kurdistania, comprised of regional president Massoud
Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Iraqi
President Jalal Talabani, secured 170,690 votes.
The alliance was followed by the Etihad Islamic
Union with 31,053 votes and the new party Goran
("Change" in Kurdish) with 12,570, in the contest
for Iraq's northernmost province and its 11 seats in
parliament.
Earlier figures also put Kurdistania ahead in the
region's Erbil province, the seat of an Iraqi
Kurdistan regional government.
Complete results from the Iraqi election are
expected on March 18 and the final ones -- after any
appeals are dealt with -- will likely come at the
end of the month.
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
AFP
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