Iraq PM, main rival tie on seat count
IRAQ: Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his main rival Iyad Allawi
were projected on Wednesday to win the same number of seats in Iraq’s
parliament in a dramatic tightening of the country’s election race.
Maliki’s State of Law Alliance and Allawi’s Iraqiya bloc were both on
pace to garner 87 seats in Iraq’s Council of Representatives, with less
than 9,000 votes separating the two nationwide, according to an AFP
projection based on 79 percent of ballots cast. But votes cast outside
Iraq and during special voting for the security forces, the sick and
prisoners have not yet been tabulated by Iraq’s election commission, and
could yet dramatically affect the outcome.
The election, the second since Saddam Hussein was ousted in the
US-led invasion of 2003, comes less than six months before the United
States is set to withdraw all of its combat troops from Iraq.
State of Law leads in Baghdad, Iraq’s largest province and accounting
for more than twice as many parliamentary seats as any other, as well as
in the oil-rich southern province of Basra, the third biggest in the
country.
It is also ahead in five other mostly Shiite southern provinces, but
failed to finish in the top three in all but one of Iraq’s
Sunni-majority provinces.
Allawi’s Iraqiya coalition, on the other hand, was leading in four
provinces, including Iraq’s second biggest province Nineveh. It was also
neck-and-neck for the lead in a fifth, Kirkuk. He also placed in the top
three in six predominantly Shiite provinces where Maliki came either
first or second. Overall, Allawi held a slim lead in the nationwide vote
count, with 2,102,981 votes cast in Iraqiya’s favour, compared to
2,093,997 for the State of Law alliance, a difference of just 8,984
votes. The Iraqi National Alliance, a coalition led by Shiite religious
groups is set to come in third with 67 seats, while Kurdistania,
comprised of the autonomous Kurdish region’s two long-dominant blocs, is
projected to have 38.
No other group is projected to win more than 10 seats.
Fifteen of the 325 seats in parliament are either compensatory or
reserved for minorities and were not included in the projection.
Iraq’s proportional representation electoral system makes it unlikely
that any single group will clinch the 163 seats needed to form a
government.
Both State of Law and Iraqiya have said they have begun talks with
rival blocs to form a government, with analysts warning that political
groupings could still manoeuvre to form a coalition without either list.
Baghdad, AFP |