Eyeing third term, Al-Maliki emerges top winner in polls

BAGHDAD: Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki won by far the most seats in parliamentary elections, results showed Monday, putting him in the driver’s seat to retain his post for a third term.
Despite the strong performance, Maliki’s State of Law alliance fell short of an overall majority, meaning he will have to court rivals from across the communal spectrum, some of whom have sharply criticized Maliki and refused to countenance his bid for re-election.
Results from the election commission showed State of Law garnered 92 out of 328 parliamentary seats, with the incumbent himself winning more than 721,000 personal votes.
Both were by far the highest such figures from the April 30 vote — the first since US troops withdrew from Iraq at the end of 201 — and marked significant increases compared to Maliki’s performance in the last general election in 2010.
Maliki’s bloc won 30 seats in Baghdad alone, and came first in 10 out of 18 provinces overall, all of them in the premier’s traditional heartland in the Shiite-majority south of the country.
His main rivals all finished with between 19 and 29 seats overall, according to an AFP tally of election commission results.
The results announced Monday can still be challenged and could change before they are finally certified by the country’s supreme court.
Both the US Embassy in Baghdad and the UN mission to Iraq welcomed the results, with Washington saying it was “a testament to the courage and resilience of the Iraqi people, and another milestone in the democratic development of Iraq.”