Shiite Ticket Wins Plurality
A ticket endorsed by the religious leaders of Iraq's long-oppressed majority Shiite Muslims won nearly half the votes in the nation's landmark Jan. 30 election, giving the coalition significant power but not enough to form a government on its own.
The ticket will have to form a coalition in the 275-member National Assembly with the other top vote-getters — the Kurds and Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's secular list — to push through their agenda and select a president and prime minister. The president and two vice presidents must be elected by a two-thirds majority.
Minority Sunni groups, which largely boycotted voting booths and form the core of the insurgency, rejected the election — raising the prospect of continued violence as Iraqis try to rebuild their country.
In an interview with Al-Jazeera television, Mohammed Bashar of the anti-American Association of Muslim Scholars said the fact that there were no international or U.N. monitors in Iraq made him question the figures.
"Those who boycotted the elections are more than those who took part in it," he said. "Boycotting the election does not mean that the boycotter will renounce his rights."
In other developments:
"This is a new birth for Iraq," Iraqi election commission spokesman Farid Ayar said as he announced results. Iraqi voters "became a legend in their confrontation with terrorists."
The Shiite-dominated ticket received more than 4 million votes, or about 48 percent of the total cast, Iraqi election officials said. A Kurdish alliance was second with 2.175 million votes, or 26 percent, and Allawi's list was third with about 1.168 million, or 13.8 percent.
Of Iraq's 14 million eligible voters, 8,456,266 cast ballots for 111 candidate lists, the commission said. That represents a turnout of about 60 percent, several points higher than the predicted 57 percent.
Ahmad Chalabi, the man accused of feeding the United States exaggerated reports on Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction, is all but assured of a senior spot in Iraq's new government, the New York Times reports.
The figures also indicate that many Sunni Arabs stayed at home on election day, with only 17,893 votes — or 2 percent — cast in the National Assembly race in Anbar province, a stronghold of the Sunni Muslim insurgency.
In Ninevah province, which includes the third-largest city, Mosul, only 17 percent of the voters participated in the National Assembly race and 14 percent voted in the provincial council contests.
A ticket headed by the country's president Ghazi al-Yawer, a Sunni Arab, won only about 150,000 votes — less than 2 percent. A list headed by Sunni elder statesman Adnan Pachachi took only 12,000 votes — or 0.1 percent.
Pachachi told Al-Arabiya television it was clear that "a big number of Iraqis" did not participate in the election, and "there are some who are not correctly and adequately represented in the National Assembly" — meaning his fellow Sunni Arabs.
"However, the elections are correct and a first step and we should concentrate our attention to drafting the constitution which should be written by all Iraqi factions in preparation for wider elections."
Parties have three days to lodge complaints before the results are considered official and assembly seats are allocated, the election commission said.
"Until now there is no estimation regarding how many seats the political parties will get. When the counts are final the number of seats will be divided according to the number of votes," commission member Adel al-Lami said.
The balloting was the first free election in Iraq in more than 50 years and the first since Saddam Hussein was ousted from power after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.