THE LEAD in the Iraqi parliamentary race yesterday was taken by the coalition led by prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, a moderate Shia fundamentalist.
His bloc may have garnered 100 seats out of a total of 325 in nine of Iraq’s 18 provinces. The list of his nearest rival, secular Shia Iyad Allawi, claims to have won majorities in five mainly Sunni provinces.
The coalition linking the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) and the party of radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a conservative religious Shia grouping tied to Iran, did not do as well as expected.
In the contest for the premiership, Baghdad’s votes could tilt the result in Mr Maliki’s favour because hundreds of thousands of Sunnis and Kurds fled the capital in 2006 and 2007 at the height of the sectarian cleansing campaign carried out by Shia militias attached to the SIIC and Sadrists.
As a consequence of this campaign, Baghdad became a Shia majority city.
However, displaced and exiled Sunnis voting elsewhere in Iraq and abroad could boost the number of votes for Mr Allawi and his multi-sect coalition.
Defiant secular voters cast ballots for him after 515 mainly secular candidates were accused of supporting the outlawed Baath party by Mr Maliki’s government.
Since no single bloc is likely to secure a majority in parliament, the largest bloc will be asked to form a cabinet with other parties and coalitions.
In 2005 this took five months of wrangling.
Estimates put the turnout at an overall average of 62.4 per cent, although in the northern Kurdish Dohuk province it was 80 per cent.
Here in Sulaimaniya, the percentage was 71.2 per cent. While the “Change” movement (Goran) was leading in Sulaimaniya city, the alliance led by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) swept the rural areas.
In the eastern areas of the province, two Kurdish Muslim fundamentalist parties captured 15-22 per cent of the vote.
The PUK-KDP bloc has, reportedly, also won eight out of 12 seats in Kirkuk city in the neighbouring province of Tamim, where many Kurds have settled since the 2003 US occupation, boosting the population from 850,000 to 1.4 million.
A Kurdish victory in Kirkuk is likely to prompt the PUK-KDP alliance to press the new government in Baghdad to conduct the long-delayed referendum in Kirkuk to decide whether or not the area should be incorporated into the autonomous Kurdish region.
Kurdish demands for annexation have created serious tension between the Kurdish region and Baghdad and violence between Kirkuk’s Kurds, on one hand, and Arabs and Turkomen, on the other.
US troops, deployed along the fault line between Sulaimaniya and Tamim, could be asked to stay on after the end of 2011 withdrawal deadline if Kirkuk remains a potential flashpoint, although the commander of US forces in Iraq, Gen Raymond Odierno, has announced that the troops are set to leave according to schedule.