BAGHDAD, 22 December 2005 — Preliminary results showed that most voters opted for Sunni and Shia religious parties in a Parliament in which nationalists who want an early timetable for a withdrawal of US and British troops will have a stronger voice.
Allawi’s camp, which includes liberals, Communists, and his own secular followers, cried foul yesterday as did the main Sunni coalition known as the Consensus Front, which includes the Islamic party. The election commission has at least a week to examine hundreds of complaints of violations on polling day and this is likely to be followed by weeks of haggling over government posts.
But the results suggest that the Shia religious block which dominates the current government will retain most, if not all, the 140 seats it holds, giving it a majority in the 275-seat Parliament. It needs two-thirds to choose a new Iraqi president — a mainly ceremonial post — along with a prime minister.
Senior Shia figures said yesterday that they would probably exclude Allawi from government. “We’ve started talks with the Sunnis and Kurds. Not many of us are eager to take Allawi on board. I don’t think he stands a chance,” said Haider Abadi, spokesman for the Dawa party of the prime minister, Ibrahim Al-Jaafari.
Washington and London had been hoping Allawi would emerge as a compromise candidate for the top post. During his years in exile in the Saddam Hussein period he had close links with the CIA and MI6. As prime minister for nine months until April this year, his tough law-and-order image chimed well with US policy.
The US and British governments, which praised last week’s poll as a triumph, are likely to paint the hung Parliament, the complaints of fraud, and the bargaining over portfolios as a further sign of healthy competition. But there was no disguising Washington’s disappointment yesterday.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Iraq, said: “It seems sectarian identity and ethnic identity have played the dominant role.” Although he went on to say the US would wait for “the principal groups to form a broad based national unity government,” it was not clear last night that they would. A Shia-Sunni-Kurdish alliance without Allawi looked the most likely option.
The new Parliament will include a higher number of anti-occupation nationalists. Moqtada Al-Sadr, the young Shia cleric whose militia confronted US forces in Najaf last year, had some 30 candidates on the main Shia list. A more radical wing of his movement, running separately as “the messengers,” took another 3% in the Shia south.
On the Sunni side a block known as the Front for National Dialogue led by Saleh Al-Mutlak, a former Baathist, did better than expected. Adnan Al-Dulaimi, a leader of the Consensus Front, called for a rerun of the vote in Baghdad. His suspicions of fraud were echoed by Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, one of the main Kurdish leaders. “The numbers are not correct. List No. 555 (the Shia religious parties) cannot have won 58% in Baghdad. A lot of complaints must be investigated,” he said.
In the current government the Kurds are the Shias’ main partners. But Talabani made it clear before polling day that he did not want to continue as president and hoped for a full executive role in the next government. The election commission says it has received 20 complaints serious enough to swing a seat unfairly. Final results will await its verdict on them. Allocating seats on the basis of the results released yesterday is complex.
