Iraq: The State of the Elections (Parker and Lynch)

With the full results from Iraq's national election due to be released today, two summaries of the current political situation from Ned Parker of the Los Angeles Times and from Marc Lynch:

Parker

With final results in Iraq's election set to be announced Friday, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and his secular rival, former Premier Iyad Allawi, are neck in neck in the race to form the next national government.

LATEST UPDATE Iraq Special: The Outcome of the Election — Uncertainty

Whether the results will even stand has been clouded by Maliki's allegations of fraud and a demand for a recount.

Below are the US military's estimates on the final results based on the counting of 95 percent of the votes in the March 7th national election. [Full images can be accessed from Parker's article.] The projections put Maliki's State of Law coalition at 90 seats and Allawi's Iraqiya list at 87 seats.



Maliki's Shiite rivals in the Iraqi National Alliance are projected to win 70 seats and the main Kurdish blocs a total of 56 seats. It is a far-from-comfortable majority for forming the next government and would leave Maliki vulnerable to being unseated.

Lynch:

The final results of Iraq’s elections are yet to be released, but with 95 per cent of the votes counted, it is clear that the contest is a dead heat between the two leading parties – the State of Law list headed by Nouri al Maliki, Iraq’s current prime minister, and the Al Iraqiya list headed by former prime minister Iyad Allawi.

The eventual winner will have the first shot at forming a coalition government, but these negotiations are widely expected to take several weeks, and Iraq’s next government is unlikely to be seated before May. While there is still a real risk that allegations of fraud, or a prolonged electoral deadlock, could trigger contentious or violent protests, the vote in Iraq can still avoid the ignominious fate of recent “decisive elections” in the region, like those in Afghanistan and Iran.

Contrary to the persistent worries of outside observers, Iraq is not unravelling. Indeed, the results suggest that Iraqi nationalism is becoming a more potent force than sectarianism and that most voters have no trouble accepting a strong central government. Both of the leading lists – al Maliki’s Shiite-dominated “party of state” and Allawi’s avowedly nonsectarian alliance – claimed to represent Iraqi nationalism, and both potential prime ministers have reputations for the forceful exercise of state power.
Meanwhile, lists identified with sectarian, Iranian or American interests fared poorly. Prominent symbols of the American-backed Sunni “Awakening” in Anbar ­Province were wiped out in the elections, capturing only a handful of seats. Within the Shiite Iraqi National Alliance, candidates affiliated with Muqtada al Sadr far outpaced those hailing from the Islamic Supreme Council in Iraq; while both have ties to Iran, where al Sadr himself resides, ISCI is closer to the leadership in Tehran while the Sadrists tend to be more deeply rooted in the Shiite underclass and to voice a more pugnacious Iraqi nationalism. Mithal al Alousi, a pro-American politician known for his outspoken views, failed to win a single seat. And a number of leading members of the post-2003 ruling elite were undone by the open-list voting system, which allowed Iraqis to select their preferred candidates from among each electoral list rather than accepting the rankings carefully negotiated in advance by party leaders.

The remarkable performance of the Iraqiya list, which is headed by Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite, and includes Tareq al Hashemi, the current Sunni vice president, and a number of other leading Sunni political figures, has been the greatest surprise of the election.

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