Iraqi electors stick to religious lines

Date: December 21 2005

The Age

By Doug Struck, Baghdad

THE first results from Iraq ‘s national parliamentary election showed powerful support for the leading Shiite Muslim religious alliance, and suggested that the country’s splintered politics has coalesced into a few large political groups divided along ethnic and religious lines.

Election officials announced unofficial results on Monday from more than half of Iraq ‘s 18 provinces and Baghdad , the largest city, showing the Shiite alliance leading overwhelmingly in central and southern Iraq . As expected, a coalition of Kurds dominated the north, while votes from the mainly Sunni Muslim western provinces have not been reported.

The results, which election officials said were incomplete and subject to challenge, appeared to dash the hopes of secular parties that voters would reject the religious and ethnic-based groups. The party of former prime minister Iyad Allawi, which campaigned for a secular, unified Iraq , received just 14 per cent of the vote in Baghdad , his stronghold.

The preliminary returns pointed towards an Iraqi government that would be led for the next four years by a conservative Shiite religious alliance that has close ties to Iran , presiding over a country hardening into three mutually suspicious political blocs.

The results showed that other small slates, including that of former US confidant Ahmed Chalabi, did not appear likely to gain representation in the first round of allocating seats for the National Assembly. But the intricate system for doling out 45 of the 275 assembly seats is designed to reward small parties, and he could join the parliament when those seats are distributed.

“It’s still preliminary,” said Francis Brooke, an American adviser to Mr Chalabi. “We are a little surprised that those numbers don’t match the numbers from our poll observers.”

The results, based on counts of 89 to 99 per cent of the votes cast in provinces reporting, brought complaints from some parties, which said the totals were significantly different from those reported by their observers at the polls. The elections commission has received 690 complaints alleging voting violations, according to Adil Lami, the head of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq.

“These are not true results. These are forged,” charged Khalaf Elayan, secretary-general of the National Dialogue Council, one of the main Sunni parties.

“We have our numbers that we got through our observers and they differ from those. We have a lot of support in Baghdad . The numbers they gave cannot be true.”

In Baghdad , with 89 per cent of the vote counted, the main Shiite alliance received 61 per cent of the vote, and the Sunni list 20 per cent.

Mithal Alusi, a former Chalabi aide who ran as a candidate for an independent secular party, said he had direct information from polling centres that his party had “thousands of voters” in the south.

“And my question now is, where are those voters? Where are the numbers?” he said.

“Our democratic system is in danger. Whoever has control is trying to steal the election.”

In the south — where nearly all ballots had been counted in most of the provinces — the United Iraqi Alliance, the main Shiite electoral grouping, swept the voting, outpolling Dr Allawi’s second-place party by a margin of 10 to one.

Dr Allawi’s office had no comment. He is believed to have strong support in Sunni areas that have not been counted.

Mr Lami, the elections commission head, said all of the ballot boxes might be counted this week.

But the distribution of the parliamentary seats will follow a lengthy process of checking and rechecking, and after the complaints of elections violations are settled.

Those complaints will be evaluated to determine if they could likely affect individual outcomes, elections commission officials said.

The Kurdish coalition avoided being splintered by smaller parties in the north and swept to large majorities there, according to the partial results. In the interim parliament elected in January, the Kurds were the second-largest political grouping, and a Kurd was chosen to be the largely ceremonial president.

WASHINGTON POST