Fraud allegations, threatened boycotts and a vote along rigid ethnic and religious lines are robbing last week’s Iraqi national parliamentary election of its credibility as a building block in democracy plans for the Middle East.
The initial results showed powerful support for the leading Shiite Muslim religious alliance, and suggested that the country’s splintered politics has coalesced into a few large political groups divided along ethnic and religious lines.
Election officials announced unofficial results on Monday from more than half of Iraq’s 18 provinces and Baghdad, the largest city, showing the Shiite alliance leading overwhelmingly in central and southern Iraq.
And, as expected, a coalition of Kurds dominated the north, while votes from the mainly Sunni Muslim western provinces have not been reported.
However Sunni Arab parties and secular political groups claimed that results were inaccurate after initial counts in the capital, Baghdad, showed nearly 59 percent of the vote going to the Shi’ite United Iraqi Alliance.
With almost 90 percent of the ballots counted, the Shi’ite grouping appeared to come in first, with more than 60 percent of the total votes cast. The Sunni block, meanwhile, represented primarily by the umbrella National Accord Front, trailed behind with only 19 percent.
The preliminary returns pointed towards an Iraqi government that would be led for the next four years by a conservative Shiite religious alliance that has close ties to Iran, presiding over a country hardening into three mutually suspicious political blocs.
On 15 December, voters cast ballots for 275 elected seats in the national assembly. The elected government, which will serve a four-year term, will in turn choose a president and two deputies from among its members.
The results showed that other small slates did not appear likely to gain representation in the first round of allocating seats for the National Assembly even though the intricate system for doling out 45 of the 275 assembly seats is designed to reward small parties.
It seems the religious Shiites are assured of dominating the new National Assembly, but not of the two-thirds majority needed for a series of major decisions on the shape of the new government or the fate of the new Iraq.
It is an outcome that signals a repeat of the protracted post-poll horse-trading that robbed the fractured country of most of the momentum won by the conduct of its first democratic elections in January.
Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of the Sunni Arab alliance the Iraqi Accordance Front, listed several complaints, including voting centers failing to open, shortages in election materials and reports of multiple voting and forgery.
The election commission, known as the IECI, has said it received 1,250 complaints about violations during the Dec. 15 elections, 25 of which it described as serious. But the commission says it does not expect the complaints will change the overall result, to be announced in January.
"Partial results in the capital show that the election was unfair because Sunnis were expected to have many more votes," said Adnan al-Dulaymi, a leader of the Sunni coalition. "We demand a new poll in the capital because this one was fraudulent."
"International organisations and the United Nations should support the call for another election before a revolt breaks out," al-Dulaymi declared.
"These are not true results. These are forged," charged Khalaf Elayan, secretary-general of the National Dialogue Council, one of the main Sunni parties. "We have our numbers that we got through our observers and they differ from those. We have a lot of support in Baghdad. The numbers they gave cannot be true."
Representatives of secular Shi’ite former prime minister Iyad Allawi and two major Sunni Arab groups, the Islamist-led Iraqi Accordance Front and the secular Iraqi Unified Front, along with other groupings, met this week to coordinate.
"We all agreed to contest and reject the results of the election," said Allawi aide Thaer al-Naqib. "We want the Electoral Commission dissolved and the election rerun."
"We will take to the streets if necessary," he told Reuters. "We might even not take up our seats in the new parliament and so any new government would be illegitimate."
Unified Front leader Saleh al-Mutlak said they would take their complaints not only to the Electoral Commission but also the Arab League, European Union and United Nations.
Other Sunni Arab leaders have warned of a resumption of rebel violence if leaders whom they accuse of being puppets of Shi’ite, non-Arab Iran keep power.
Sunni rebels, whose informal truce helped increase turnout as insurgents pitched for a voice in the new, full-term legislature, warned they would intensify attacks if the Shi’ite Alliance held on to the lion’s share of power.
"The resistance will intensify and ... and much blood will be spilt if Iran’s agents gain power," said Majeed al-Gaood, who says he speaks for rebel groups, from neighbouring Jordan.
Electoral Commission chief Hussein al-Hindawi told a news conference that 10.9 million voters took part on Thursday, putting national turnout at 70 percent, much higher than the 58 percent who participated in January’s ballot, when many in the Sunni Arab minority stayed away from the polls.
The initial results showed powerful support for the leading Shiite Muslim religious alliance, and suggested that the country’s splintered politics has coalesced into a few large political groups divided along ethnic and religious lines.
Election officials announced unofficial results on Monday from more than half of Iraq’s 18 provinces and Baghdad, the largest city, showing the Shiite alliance leading overwhelmingly in central and southern Iraq.
And, as expected, a coalition of Kurds dominated the north, while votes from the mainly Sunni Muslim western provinces have not been reported.
However Sunni Arab parties and secular political groups claimed that results were inaccurate after initial counts in the capital, Baghdad, showed nearly 59 percent of the vote going to the Shi’ite United Iraqi Alliance.
With almost 90 percent of the ballots counted, the Shi’ite grouping appeared to come in first, with more than 60 percent of the total votes cast. The Sunni block, meanwhile, represented primarily by the umbrella National Accord Front, trailed behind with only 19 percent.
The preliminary returns pointed towards an Iraqi government that would be led for the next four years by a conservative Shiite religious alliance that has close ties to Iran, presiding over a country hardening into three mutually suspicious political blocs.
On 15 December, voters cast ballots for 275 elected seats in the national assembly. The elected government, which will serve a four-year term, will in turn choose a president and two deputies from among its members.
The results showed that other small slates did not appear likely to gain representation in the first round of allocating seats for the National Assembly even though the intricate system for doling out 45 of the 275 assembly seats is designed to reward small parties.
It seems the religious Shiites are assured of dominating the new National Assembly, but not of the two-thirds majority needed for a series of major decisions on the shape of the new government or the fate of the new Iraq.
It is an outcome that signals a repeat of the protracted post-poll horse-trading that robbed the fractured country of most of the momentum won by the conduct of its first democratic elections in January.
Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of the Sunni Arab alliance the Iraqi Accordance Front, listed several complaints, including voting centers failing to open, shortages in election materials and reports of multiple voting and forgery.
The election commission, known as the IECI, has said it received 1,250 complaints about violations during the Dec. 15 elections, 25 of which it described as serious. But the commission says it does not expect the complaints will change the overall result, to be announced in January.
"Partial results in the capital show that the election was unfair because Sunnis were expected to have many more votes," said Adnan al-Dulaymi, a leader of the Sunni coalition. "We demand a new poll in the capital because this one was fraudulent."
"International organisations and the United Nations should support the call for another election before a revolt breaks out," al-Dulaymi declared.
"These are not true results. These are forged," charged Khalaf Elayan, secretary-general of the National Dialogue Council, one of the main Sunni parties. "We have our numbers that we got through our observers and they differ from those. We have a lot of support in Baghdad. The numbers they gave cannot be true."
Representatives of secular Shi’ite former prime minister Iyad Allawi and two major Sunni Arab groups, the Islamist-led Iraqi Accordance Front and the secular Iraqi Unified Front, along with other groupings, met this week to coordinate.
"We all agreed to contest and reject the results of the election," said Allawi aide Thaer al-Naqib. "We want the Electoral Commission dissolved and the election rerun."
"We will take to the streets if necessary," he told Reuters. "We might even not take up our seats in the new parliament and so any new government would be illegitimate."
Unified Front leader Saleh al-Mutlak said they would take their complaints not only to the Electoral Commission but also the Arab League, European Union and United Nations.
Other Sunni Arab leaders have warned of a resumption of rebel violence if leaders whom they accuse of being puppets of Shi’ite, non-Arab Iran keep power.
Sunni rebels, whose informal truce helped increase turnout as insurgents pitched for a voice in the new, full-term legislature, warned they would intensify attacks if the Shi’ite Alliance held on to the lion’s share of power.
"The resistance will intensify and ... and much blood will be spilt if Iran’s agents gain power," said Majeed al-Gaood, who says he speaks for rebel groups, from neighbouring Jordan.
Electoral Commission chief Hussein al-Hindawi told a news conference that 10.9 million voters took part on Thursday, putting national turnout at 70 percent, much higher than the 58 percent who participated in January’s ballot, when many in the Sunni Arab minority stayed away from the polls.
