Tight poll contest predicted in Iraq

IRAQ: Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was locked in a tight contest with rival Iyad Allawi to keep his job, as results from Iraq’s elections were set to flow in on Friday.

Six days after the election, Maliki and Allawi, both Shiite, have emerged nationally as the main candidates for the post of prime minister, with initial results from four of Iraq’s 18 provinces putting their two blocs in the lead.

Preliminary figures released on Thursday for Najaf, Babil, Diyala and Salaheddin put Maliki’s State of Law Alliance ahead in the first two provinces, while ex-premier Allawi’s Iraqiya bloc was in front in the latter pair.

Early results from other provinces, including the Sunni province of Anbar in Iraq’s west, were expected on Friday.

In Najaf and Babil, two predominantly Shiite provinces in south Iraq, State of Law held leads of 7,000 votes and 14,000 votes respectively, with the Iraqi National Alliance (INA), a coalition led by Shiite religious groups, in second place after 30 percent of votes had been counted.

Allawi’s secular Iraqiya group was in third place.

Iyad al-Kinaani, an official in Iraq’s election commission, added that Allawi was in the lead in Diyala and Salaheddin, two majority Sunni provinces north of Baghdad, with 17 percent of votes counted in each province.

In the autonomous region of Kurdistan, meanwhile, Kinaani said the Kurdistania alliance, made up of the region’s two long-dominant parties, was in the lead in Arbil province with 27 percent of votes counted.

In second place was the opposition Goran bloc (“Change” in Kurdish), which surprised observers by snaring nearly a quarter of the vote in Kurdish regional elections last year. Complete results are expected to be announced on March 18 and the final ones after any appeals are dealt with will come at the end of the month.

Analysts have predicted protracted coalition building, as no single grouping is expected to win the 163 seats necessary to form a government on its own.

Several blocs called on Thursday for individual polling station tally sheets to be published online, expressing concerns the nationwide vote would not be in line with the total from individual stations.

Were the polling station tally sheets posted online, political blocs could check to see if their sum corresponded with the nationwide results tabulated by the election commission.

Electoral authorities have received around 1,000 complaints, according to Hamdiyah al-Husseini, an election official. BAGHDAD, Friday, AFP