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Disappointed Shiites Seek Allies: Report
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Shiite
leader Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim weeps after hearing election results.
(Reuters).
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CAIRO,
February 14 (IslamOnline.net) – As the vote tally of Iraq’s first
multi-party election in decades fell short of what the major Shiite
United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) had been expecting, its leaders are poised
to strike coalition deals with the other major winners, who have a
totally different agenda, a leading US newspaper said on Monday,
February 14.
“We
have to compromise,” Adnan Ali, a senior leader in the Shiite Dawa
party, one of the largest powers in the Shiite alliance, told The
New York Times.
“Even
though we have a majority, we will need other groups to form a
government,” Ali added.
The
election results left the UIA with 132 seats of the 275-member
Transitional National Assembly.
The
Kurdish ticket, grouping the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and
the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), came second with 71 seats and
interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s list ranked third with 38.
A
slate headed by interim President Ghazi Al-Yawar, a Sunni, only got
150,000 votes, less than two percent of those cast.
The
results mean that the Shiite alliance failed to command the two-thirds
parliamentary majority.
The
interim assembly will elect a president and two deputies, who in turn
will have to unanimously pick a prime minister.
The
new premier will then be tasked with choosing a cabinet that has to be
approved by a majority in parliament.
Before
the results announcements, the UIA insisted on capturing the
much-coveted and influential prime minister post while the Kurds
agreed to a parliamentary
coalition
with Allawi, who is seeking to keep his job.
The
Kurds asked, in swap, for Allawi’s backing for PUK leader Jalal
Talabani to be elected president and for an official recognition that
oil-rich Kirkuk was part of Iraq Kurdistan.
Powerful
Boycotters
A
non-Shiite senior Iraqi official told the Post that if Sunni
Arabs, who largely boycotted the election, decide to take part in the
future political process, they would almost certainly dilute the
Shiite alliance's already thin margin.
“This
is the height of the Shiite vote,” he said.
“The
next election assumes Sunni participation, and you will see an
entirely different dynamic then.”
The
majority of Sunnis did not cast ballot in the polls for being held
under the US occupation.
The
Association of Muslim Scholars, the highest Sunni religious authority
in Iraq, championed the call for election boycott.
The
Islamic Party of Iraq, the main Sunni political party, had quit the
election race also over aggravating insecurity.
Consensus
Needed
Some
Iraqi leaders told the American daily that the UIA would try now to
enter into a “national unity government” comprising the Kurds, the
Sunnis and secular Shiites.
No
decisions, in consequence, will be taken without a broad national
consensus, they expected.
Chief
among the contentious issues are the role of Islam in the permanent
constitution and the status of the ethnic tinderbox city of Kirkuk.
“The
prospect of a divided national assembly, split between religious and
secular parties, also appeared to signal a continuing role for the
American government, which already maintains 150,000 troops here, to
help broker disputes,” The Times commented.
Before
the results, top Shiite authorities in Iraq demanded that the new
constitution clearly stipulates that Islam be the sole source of
legislation.
The
role of Islam was a particular sticking point when an interim
administrative law was drawn up under the US-led occupation.
After
often acrimonious debate and the threat of a veto by then US
administrator Paul Bremer, the final version said that Islam should be
“a
source” of
legislation.
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