Iraq's Election: Can This Deadlock Be Broken?

[tekisui]

Source: TIME

After an election that failed to produce a clear winner, Iraq's political leaders are squaring up for a fight that could have dire consequences for the country's security situation. Last week's media reports hailing Iyad Allawi as the election victor were a little premature: the former U.S.-installed Prime Minister's secular nationalist slate may have finished narrowly ahead of its nearest rival, but its share of the vote translates into only 91 seats in the 325-seat legislature, where 163 seats is the magic number needed to form a government. And while Allawi's first-place finish in the poll theoretically puts him in the pole position to build a coalition government, the odds against him achieving that are substantial, and incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is hard at work ensuring that Allawi doesn't even get the opportunity to try.

Al-Maliki has refused to accept the poll results, announced on March 26, and has demanded a recount — even though the election was certified by U.N. observers as largely aboveboard. The incumbent has also won from the Supreme Court an interpretation of Iraq's constitution that could prevent Allawi from having first bite at forming a new government. The constitution requires that the "bloc" with the most seats be given 30 days to form a ruling coalition, but in response to al-Maliki's inquiry, the court has ruled that bloc doesn't mean electoral slate, but rather the alliances as they present themselves when the parliament is seated, toward the end of April. If al-Maliki can cut deals to give him a bigger coalition by then, he'll get first bite at forming a government.

Nor will al-Maliki be unhappy about the efforts of others to trim Allawi's advantage before then. The Justice and Accountability (formerly De-Baathification) Commission, which operates under the guidance of Ahmed Chalabi — the onetime Pentagon favorite now running on the Iran-backed Iraqi National Alliance (INA) slate — announced on Tuesday its intention to demand that the Supreme Court disqualify as ineligible three candidates on Allawi's list because of alleged ties to the former regime of Saddam Hussein. If the court upholds this challenge — and it has sympathetically received the commission's previous effort to expel Sunni candidates — al-Maliki's 89 seats could then, theoretically, be deemed to have finished first.

Despite the secular-nationalist orientation of both al-Maliki's and Allawi's slates, the election results showed a familiar sectarian split. Most Sunnis voted for Allawi's Iraqiya list, while the Shi'ite vote was split between al-Maliki's State of Law slate and that of the INA, representing the Shi'ite Islamist parties that had put al-Maliki in power. If al-Maliki could mend the rift in the Shi'ite vote and cut a deal with the INA (which won 70 seats), that combination alone would put him just four seats shy of a majority — a difference he could easily make up by resuming his alliance with the Kurdish bloc, which garnered 43 seats. It may not be that easy, of course, because both the key element of the INA — the supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr — and the Kurdish leadership have been antagonized by al-Maliki's leadership and would prefer to see him gone. They could yet try and make replacing al-Maliki a key condition for joining a coalition with his political bloc.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1976730,00.html?xid=rss-topstories#ixzz0jnNJkkMK

[tekisui]

1. Allawi warns of violence if Shia alliance takes power

An alliance of major Shia parties that sidelines his election-winning cross-sectarian bloc could tip Iraq back into sectarian violence, former prime minister Iyad Allawi said yesterday.
Allawi, a secular Shia, said a proposed merger to form a government between Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s State of Law coalition and fellow Shia bloc, the Iraqi National Alliance (INA), whose leaders have close ties to Iran, would effectively be a return to sectarian government.
“This will cause a very severe and serious backlash in the country. It will take it to square one,” Allawi said in an interview. “It will really be quite devastating.”
“Unfortunately, and God forbid, I can see violence, and maybe severe violence.”
Allawi rode strong support from Iraq’s Sunni-dominated northern and western provinces to win a March 7 parliamentary election that he said showed the “true colours of Iraq” as a non-sectarian state.

http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=352464&version=1&template_id=37&parent_id=17

[kenny blankenship]

2. It's funny how the Iraqi election "irregularities" are getting almost no attention

I mean, you're doing your part, but few seem to care. Yes, this kind of fake democracy bullshit was to be expected, but that's an argument for not going in in the first place, or else it's an argument for leaving before another American dies or another Iraqi dies by American action. It's not an argument for giving "the march of Democracy""the process of Empire" a pass. Which is what seems to be happening.