NEWS: Shiite party, backed by clergy, holds majority
Official results give alliance the edge; vote for PM on Friday
The Associated Press
Updated: 8:40 a.m. ET Feb. 17, 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's electoral commission certified the results of the country's Jan. 30 elections Thursday and allocated 140 seats to the clergy-backed United Iraqi Alliance, giving them a majority in the new parliament.
The allocation sets the stage for the first meeting of the new National Assembly, which will be in power for 10 months and draft a new constitution. The first order of business will be to elect a president and two vice presidents to largely ceremonial positions.
The president and vice presidents will then name a prime minister, an appointment that will be worked out in advance by the largest parties in the National Assembly.
The commission first announced results from the ballot Sunday, saying the clergy-backed United Iraqi Alliance scooped 48 percent of the vote for the National Assembly, the Kurdish alliance took 26 percent and Allawi, a secular Shiite who supported strong ties to Washington, won only 14 percent.
But after the votes of the 99 parties that did not make it into the parliament were subtracted, the alliance held a majority. The seats were allocated according to this narrower vote count.
The results were announced after a deadline to file complaints expired Wednesday. Farid Ayar, a spokesman for the election commission, told Al-Arabia television that 47 complaints were filed and that most of them has been resolved.
The present government will now set a date for installing the new government. There have been no indications on how long that might take, and will depend on back-room dealmaking among the parties.
Top Shiite politicians have agreed to choose their nominee for prime minister through a secret ballot, expected to take place Friday, to decide a two-man race between Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Ahmad Chalabi.
Stark contrast between candidates
The contrast between the two candidates for prime minister is stark and reveals a division within the clergy-endorsed alliance, made up of 10 major political parties and various allied smaller groups.
Al-Jaafari, 58, is the leader of the religious Dawa Party, one of Iraq’s oldest parties, known for its popularity and close ties to Iran. Although al-Jaafari is a moderate, his party’s platform is conservative.
Chalabi, 58, who left Iraq as a teen, leads the Iraqi National Congress and had close ties to the Pentagon before falling out of favor last year after claims he passed intelligence information to Iran.
A secular Shiite, Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress is an umbrella for groups that included Iraqi exiles, Kurds and Shiites. Much of the supposed intelligence his group supplied on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction programs failed to pan out.
Al-Jaafari was considered the leading contender Wednesday, though Chalabi’s aides said their man had enough votes to win.
A close aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the spiritual leader of Iraq’s Shiite Muslims, said the alliance’s leaders will visit the grand ayatollah’s office in Najaf to get his blessing for their choice. In the event they can’t agree, al-Sistani will make the final decision, the aide said.
Kurdish parties have apparently agreed to support the alliance’s candidate for prime minister in return for the largely ceremonial presidency.
Sunni Arabs, favored under Saddam Hussein’s rule, largely stayed away from the polls. But the Shiites must move cautiously if they want to form an inclusive government.
Insurgency rages on
The government that takes power will face the challenge of quelling a violent insurgency, largely being waged by Sunni extremists.
Insurgents detonated a bomb Thursday on a road near Kirkuk as a convoy of U.S. troops and Iraqi National Guardsmen passed by, injuring seven Iraqi troops, officials said.
In western Baghdad, a crowd of Shiite Muslims attacked a suspected suicide bomber Wednesday evening who was mingling amongst them and, fearing he might be about to blow himself up, beat him to death. The Shiites were celebrating Ashura, an annual ritual which honors the martyrdom of the Prophet Mohammed’s grandson. At Ashura last year, 170 people were killed by suicide bombers in Karbala and Baghdad in one of the worst attacks in Iraq.
Also Wednesday, the bodies of eight Iraqis described as collaborators with U.S. forces were found in a desert area north of Baghdad, and sporadic clashes between U.S. and Iraqi forces and insurgents were reported in the restive cities of Ramadi, Samarra and Mosul.
The case of a captive Italian journalist, kidnapped Feb. 4 in Baghdad, took an alarming turn Wednesday as a videotape delivered anonymously to Associated Press Television News showed Giuliana Sgrena speaking in both French and Italian as she pleaded for the Italian government to withdraw its troops.
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