Iraq Special: The Outcome of the Election --- Uncertainty

The dominant headline from the uncertified results of Iraq's national elections, released this evening, will be that former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and his Iraqqiya list "won" with 91 seats, two more than the State of Law list headed by current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Don't be fooled. Since no alliance, let alone single party, won even 30 percent of the 325 seats in Iraq's Parliament, here's your headline:

Uncertainty.

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

The three weeks waiting for this preliminary outcome are only a prelude to months of bargaining, pressuring, and promising to try and force a coalition. That brings into play the Iraqi National Alliance of predominantly "religious" Shiite parties (v. the "secular" Shi'a al-Maliki and Allawi), with 71 seats, and the alliance of Kurdistan's two dominant parties, with 43.




Reidar Visser offers this useful snap analysis on historiae.org:

The Iraqi elections commission, IHEC, has today released the full, uncertified results of the 7 March parliamentary elections. The distribution of the seats has been specified at the entity level for all the 325 deputies in the next assembly.

The Iraqi elections commission, IHEC, has today released the full, uncertified results of the 7 March parliamentary elections. The distribution of the seats has been specified at the entity level for all the 325 deputies in the next assembly.

The differences with the situation as reported in earlier counts (and calculated in accordance with IHEC regulation 21) are minimal. The secular-nationalist Iraqiyya (INM) comes out on top with 91 seats, followed by State of Law (SLA) headed by Nuri al-Maliki second at 89 seats, the Iraqi National Alliance at 70 seats and the Kurdistan Alliance at 43 seats (having apparently made some serious headway in the final count). The distribution of minority seats was apparently on the patternforecasted previously. [The table with distribution of seats is in Visser's original post.]

The names of the winning candidates (based on how the electorate used the open-list option to promote individuals within a list) have yet to be published; this will be done at the IHEC website and in Iraqi newspapers tomorrow. The identity of the winners of the seven compensation seats (two for each of the three big lists and one for the Kurdish list) will be withheld pending a query to the federal supreme court about the rules for their allocation to individuals.

Ayad Allawi and Iraqiyya now go strengthened into the coalition-forming process. By winning more seats than expected south of Baghdad and almost as many seats as Maliki in Baghdad, Allawi has proved that he is more than "the candidate of the Sunnis" (which was always implausible given his own Shiite background). However, the two parties that are closest to each other on many key constitutional issues (and maybe the most promising combination to get an oil law passed anytime soon), Iraqiyya and State of Law, remain at odds with each other mainly due to differences at the personal level between their leaders. In this kind of situation, probably the most logical step for Iraqiyya would be to explore the possibility of a deal with the Kurds that balances some solid concessions to Arbil with preservation of Iraqi nationalist ideals as far as the structure of government south of Kurdistan is concerned. Additional support could come either from Shiite Islamists who share the view of Iraqiyya on the importance of a centralised state in the rest of Iraq (for example the Sadrists), or, alternatively, all the small blocs in parliament joined together with Iraqiyya and the Kurds (166 seats). It is to be hoped that the ideologically contradictive scheme of a deal with ISCI (the pro-Iranian decentralist Shiite party with which Iraqiyya only shares certain ties at the personal level) will be avoided, since it would mean another oversized, ineffective government populated by parties with little in common. At any rate, ISCI now has diminishing cloutwithin INA.

Also, some uncertainty has been added to the mix due to a ruling by the federal supreme court yesterday which explicitly makes it clear that the key definition of "the largest bloc in parliament" (which is supposed to form the next government) can also include post-election bloc formation. This in turn breathes new life into the scenario preferred by Iran of the two Shiite-led blocs, INA and SLA, joining together to a single big entity, on the pattern of what happened in 2004/2005. Talks about this has come to the fore again over the last weeks as Maliki gradually realised that his ambition of going it alone, separate from the other Shiites, was not going to be fulfilled quite in the way he had foreseen. It would, however, require considerable recalibration within Shiite circles, since the Sadrists are likely to overshadow ISCI in the INA contingent, and they are not known to be keen on a second Maliki premiership. Nonetheless, the mere fact that this option is now being talked about at all signifies the big irony of these elections: Ali Faysal al-Lami, the de-Baathification director, both lost and won them to some extent. He got just a few hundred personal votes for INA in Baghdad, and will not win a seat in parliament. But through his witch hunt he forced Maliki into a more sectarian corner, and thereby prevented him from winning much-needed support north of Baghdad.

Meanwhile, the next procedural step is of a simpler character: The results will have to be formally certified in the Iraqi legal system. Only then will the clock for government formation start ticking in a formal sense. Upon certification of the results, the current president, Jalal Talabani, must call on the new national assembly to convene within fifteen days. At that point, the council will have to elect a speaker with two deputies. In theory, that election is separate from the government formation, although it seems likely that whoever is forming the next government will want allies to fill those posts: With the control of the parliamentary agenda that comes with them, they are going to be more important during the next four years than the office of the president, which now becomes a more ceremonial position. The new president, in turn, is to be elected within 30 days of the first parliamentary meeting. The constitution stipulates an aspiration of a two thirds majority for the election of the president but allows for a simple-majority run-off in case that requirement should prove elusive. This in turn means that it is the 163 mark that needs to be met in order to secure the election of the president and thereby get the government-formation process on track in earnest, with a deadline of another fifteen days for the president to formally charge the nominee of the biggest parliamentary bloc to form a government within another thirty days. In other words, if certification takes place around 1 April, a meeting of the new parliament must be held within 15 April, a new president must be elected within 15 May, a PM nominee must be identified by 1 June, and a new cabinet must be presented for approval of parliament before 1 July. The psychological deadline is likely to be the start of Ramadan around 10 August and the scheduled completion of withdrawal of US combat troops by 31 August.

The Latest from Iran (26 March): Break Time

1935 GMT: We Will, We Will Rescue You. It's Hojatoleslam Kazem Seddiqi taking Tehran's Friday Prayers, and he's a man with a mission:

We should focus our efforts on freeing Americans from under the yoke of the two ruling parties in the United States. We want to save the West and spread morality in the world. We should concentrate our efforts on the international revolution and rescuing nations from the rule of arrogant powers.

Seddiqi also criticised President Obama for supporting Iran's "civil rights activists".

(So Seddiqi is denouncing the US Government's intervention in another country's affairs but calling on the Iranian Government to...intervene in another country's affair. Well, that seems logically consistent.)

Iran: “We are Going to Make the Future Better”
UPDATED Iran Appeal: Japan’s Deportation of Jamal Saberi
UPDATED Iran: The Controversy over Neda’s “Fiance”
The Latest from Iran (25 March): Lying Low

1930 GMT: Opening Communications. The United Nations' communications agency, the International Telecommunication Union, has called on Iran on Friday to end jamming of foreign satellite broadcasts.


The statement follows a similar announcement by the European Union earlier this week.

1920 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch.  A story to treat with caution, but interesting if true: Rah-e-Sabz is claiming, from a source close to Hashemi Rafsanjani, that the former President has said that people should continue their protests to insist that their demands are met. Rafsanjani allegedly pointed to the end of the Nowruz holidays on 12 Farvardin (next Thursday, 1 April) as an occasion for public demonstrations.

1320 GMT: Nowruz Visits. Mostafa Tajzadeh, former Deputy of Minister of Interior and senior member of the reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front, has used his temporary release to visit families of political prisoners who were not freed for the holidays. Amongst those seen by Tajzadeh and his wife were the families of Mohammad Nourizad, the filmmaker and former editor-in-chief of Kayhan, Davood Soleimani, member of Islamic Iran Participation Front, journalist Emadeddin Baghi.

1145 GMT: Iran Nukes No, Pakistan Nukes OK. How far will the US go to keep economic pressure on Tehran? This from Asia Times Online:

In 2008, after several years of negotiations, nuclear-armed India and the United States signed a civilian nuclear deal that in essence allowed India access to civilian nuclear technology and fuel from other countries even though it is not a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Pakistan, which like its neighbor India has a nuclear arsenal and is not a signatory to the NPT, has long been rankled by India's deal, wanting one of its own with the US. This topic featured high on the agenda of a top-level Pakistani delegation that held talks in Washington this week with senior US officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Washington, with some reservations, has been receptive to Pakistan's wishes, especially as Islamabad has emerged as a key strategic partner in the efforts to bring the war in Afghanistan to a conclusion, and in dealing with al-Qaeda and militancy in general in the region.

There will be a price: the US, according to analysts who spoke to Asia Times Online, wants Pakistan to walk away from the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project.

Last year, Islamabad and Tehran finalized a US$7.5 billion deal to transfer gas 2,775 kilometers from fields in Iran to terminals in Pakistan, and this month they signed an operational agreement on the project, despite US opposition.

The US, as it seeks to isolate Iran and impose sanctions on it over Tehran's nuclear program, is a vocal critic of the pipeline project, which was initially to have included a third leg going to India. India dropped its participation in the project, ostensibly over pricing disagreements; there is widespread belief that it did so to secure the nuclear deal with the US.

1040 GMT: The Bunker-Busting Bomb Iran Story. This is one that won't go away: Abdul-Rahman al-Rashed, the general manager of Al Arabiya TV, writes in Asharq al-Awsat, "The perplexing question: Will a war be launched on Iran if the economic sanctions fail?"

The evidence is the revelation of the move of bunker-piercing bombs to a US base on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Office. I can only repeat what I have posted in comments as this issue has percolated. This move would have been made irrespective of the current crisis with Iran: it is part of a "force projection" plan by the US military in the region, with a view not only to asserting an image of superiority vis-a-vis Iran but also in cases such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

0935 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. RAHANA reports that Mitra Aali, a graduate student at Sharif University was detained by the Ministry of Intelligence on 10 March and her whereabouts are now unknown.

RAHANA also reports on other political prisoners, including Behrooz Javid Tehrani, who are being held in solitary confinement and inhumane conditions at Evin Prison.

Aali, detained on two previous occasions since the June election, had been asked by the Ministry to come in for a "follow-up" and to receive her confiscated possessions.

0925 GMT: Remembering. A new video tells the story of Ramin Ramezani, who was killed during the 15 June demonstrations.

0750 GMT: Parliament v. President. Continued fighting over the Ahmadinejad subsidy reduction plan --- former Minister of Health Massoud Pezeshkian has said the President "has no excuse" and "must follow laws", a claim echoed by reformist MP Majid Nasirpour. Reformist Mostafa Kavakebian insists the decision about the usefulness of subsidy cuts is with the Majlis not Ahmadinejad.

0745 GMT: Economy Watch. Is this a sign of the President trying to tighten his control over Iran's energy industry? Rah-e-Sabz claims that Minister of Oil Massoud Mirkazemi has been replaced as head of the Government's "oil group" by First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi.

0710 GMT: With a week left in Iran's Nowruz holidays, political news continues to be slow.

On the international front, the Obama Administration seems to be moving away from its toughest proposed sanctions amidst renewed "5+1" talks on Iran's nuclear programme. Still, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has launched another warning about Tehran's military threat. Gates asserted that Iran's unmanned aerial vehicles --- "drones" --- could cause problems for the US in theatres like Iraq and Afghanistan.

The American pressure is still caught up in a complex international game, however. Russia continues with a dual approach, offering signals that it might support some further sanctions while reassuring Iran that the Bushehr nuclear plant will go on-line in 2010.

Fereshteh Ghazi prefers to concentrate on the threat inside Iran. She offers a summary article of the just-concluded Iranian Year 1388 as year for Evin Prison and interrogators.

Israel-US Analysis: After Washington, What Will Netanyahu Do?

It's not only the high-level US-Israel meetings in Washington that were divisive. The follow-up statements also clash.

On Thursday, President Obama’s spokesman Robert Gibbs said: “I think we’re making progress on important issues. But nothing more on substance to report than that.”

Israel: So What is This Government Crisis? (Carlstrom)

In contrast, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to Israel, his spokesman Nir Hefez told Army Radio that Netanyahu had reached a “list of understandings” on policy toward Palestinians, albeit "with additional points still in disagreement between the sides” in Washington. Hafez added:

There are several steps that the Americans would like to see Israel take in order to restart the peace process. We returned from the US with the understanding that on one hand, the construction policy in Jerusalem will remain unchanged, and on the other hand, Israel is prepared to make gestures in order to resume the peace process.

Despite the fact that Netanyahu gave no concessions on Jerusalem, Obama's timeline seems to be explicit: Washington wants tangible change to bring to the Arab League meeting on Saturday.

What are these "demands"? According to The Jerusalem Post, the Obama Administration asked Israel to commit to some limits on building in east Jerusalem; to show a willingness to deal with the so-called "core" issues of borders, refugees, and Jerusalem in the indirect talks; and to agree to a number of confidence-building measures, including the release of hundreds of Fatah prisoners. It is also reported that the administration asked for a commitment to extend the moratorium on housing starts in the West Bank settlements beyond the 10 months originally declared by Netanyahu.

In response, the Israeli Prime Minister asked for extra time to convene his seven-member inner cabinet ministers on Friday to discuss the US demands. According to Israeli senior officials, Netanyahu did not commit himself to a prisoner release and was bringing the matter to the security establishment in Israel for their consideration.

Netanyahu said that he is supporting construction in Jerusalem on his own accord and not because coalition partners are pressuring him to do so: "I do not need coalition partners to pressure me into continuing to build in Jerusalem. I, myself, plan to continue building in Jerusalem as all previous prime ministers did before me."

Sources close to the Prime Minister say that Netanyahu will intensify efforts to draw Kadima members of the Knesset into his Government. In response to this, senior sources in Kadima told Haaretz:

If Benjamin Netanyahu wants us in the coalition, he needs to alter its makeup, break up his extremist government, rebuild it with us. We will not enter a right-wing government and we will not join without an orderly political [peace negotiations] program.

So, what is Netanyahu's position now?

It appears that the Prime Minister is trying to convince his coalition members of additional "concessions" --- extending the moratorium on West Bank construction, delaying some settlements in East Jerusalem until the end of proximity talks, releasing hundreds of Fatah members, and transferring control of some areas in the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority --- in return for continuing other settlement constructions in East Jerusalem.

If Netanyahu succeeds, then his government will be able to claim "no more concessions" to Palestinian demands. If not, then he will have exhausted all efforts with his coalition members, setting the conditions to blame his partners and accepting Kadima's demand for a reconfigured Government.

But for all these calculations, Netanyahu still faces a cold reality: the man who couldn't get an answer in Washington, needs an answer in Israel from someone who will work with him.

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.

Read rest of article....

Turkey-Armenia: The Freeze in Relations

Fulya Inci writes for EA:

The reconciliation process in Turkey-Armenia relations seems to be frozen after the resolutions of U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs and Swedish Parliament in early March calling the events of 1915 as “genocide”. The Turkish Government reacted loudly to the decisions, and the two neighbouring countries now blame each other for not taking concrete steps to political resolution.

The House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee resolution on 4 March declaring “genocide”, supporting the Armenian case, stunned Turkish officials because they thought they had conducted an effective lobbying campaign. Committee members voting against the resolution indicated that they approved the finding of genocide but that the timing of the declaration was wrong. They mentioned that it would damage the Turkey-US alliance, especially in Afghanistan, and the normalization process between Turkey and Armenia.


However, the resolution passed by a 23- 22 vote, and Turkish ambassador Namık Tan was soon recalled by Ankara. Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized President Obama for his late intervention. Tan is still in Turkey, and his return subject to a "clear stance" of Obama demanded by Erdogan.

A similar resolution was approved by the Swedish parliament in a 131-130 vote on 11 March, alleging genocide of Assyrians and Pontic Greeks at the same time. Although Swedish senior officials said that they do not support the bill, diplomatic tensions have risen.

Now the Turkish-Armenian protocols signed in October are in limbo. Armenia has made the recognition of genocide a pre-condition for further development of relations while Turkey insists on a resolution of Azeri-Armenian conflict, including over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Turkish Parliament has not ratified the protocols. Erdogan's interview with BBC Turkish Service during his last visit to London, with remarks of “deporting 100.000 Armenians living illegally in Turkey...in case the normalization process does not work", has been condemned.