Iraqi Election Update
The latest news from the Iraqi electoral front is a pretty good mix; although protests (in the main peaceful, and thus encouraging in and of themselves) continue, the UN has pronounced itself satisfied that the elections were credible, and Omar of the increasingly indispensible Iraq the Model says the electoral commission admits that some ballot boxes are tainted, but that the fraud is not large enough to require a new election:
The election commission had a press conference today where its senior officials dismissed the accusations directed at them and stressed that violations weren’t big enough to justify a rerun but they also stated that the results of certain voting stations in Baghdad, Mosul, Diyala, Kirkuk, Erbil and Anbar will be ignored in the count and that investigations are underway in Basra and Babil.
Omar also reports some preliminary results:
UIA: 130 seats.
Accord Front: 42 seats.
Kurdish alliance: 52 seats.
Iraqi list (Allawi): 25 seats.
Dialogue Front (al-Mutlaq): 11 seats.
Islamic Union of Kurdistan: 5 seats.
Reconciliation and Liberation Front (Mish’an al-Juboori): 3 seats.
Each of Mithal al-Alusi, Risalioon (Sadrists), Rafidain (Christians) and Turkmen Front won 1 seat.
3 remaining seats will go to other religious/ethnic minorities, probably Mendaeen, Ezedyeen.
So, roughly 47% of the available seats will go to the main Shiite religious party, about 15% to the main secular Sunni bloc, about 19% to the primary Kurdish bloc, with the other 19% split among the various other factions. That’s not a bad outcome, really; the Shiites will dominate, as expected, but they will have to form a bloc with at least one other faction to push through any controversial measures.
To be sure, great obstacles remain; it appears all but certain that a large amount of fraud did occur, unlike the mostly clean January elections, and that will add fuel to the fire of the insurgency, no doubt; whether the Sunnis will opt for bullets or ballots is still, I suppose, an open question, though the ballots appear to lead at the moment. Also troubling are reports that the Kurds are preparing to break apart the nascent democracy before it has a chance to congeal.
All the more reason, then, to hope and pray that the upcoming summit between the various faction leaders, slated for no later than next week, proves fruitful for all concerned…
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