Iraq-Namese Prime Minister al-Maliki Tries Stealing Election

The Iraq-Namese electorate went to the polls on March 7, and the vote went against the incumbent Nouri al-Maliki. His State of Law bloc narrowly lost to Iyad Allawi's al-Iraqiya coalition -- 89 seats for the former and 91 seats for the latter. This gives Mr. Allawi first crack at forming a government. Mr. al-Maliki has, therefore, decided to disqualify certain Iraqiya candidates and force a recount in Baghdad. One wants to cry, "Stop, Thief!"

Although Mr. Allawi is a Shi'ite, the officially secular Iraqiya bloc is largely Sunni-backed. Some of these Sunni leaders had ties to the Ba'athist Party of Saddam Hussein, and Mr. al-Maliki is using the de-Ba'ath-ification regulations to bump Mr. Allawi's legislators from the parliament. Dozens were disqualified before the vote, and at least one (maybe more) has been disqualified after. Whether he will be replaced by another from the Iraqiya list is unclear. Some have said the recount in Baghdad may flip the seat to the State of Law bloc anyway.

Baghdad isn't the only place where a recount is likely to occur. In the two northern provinces of Nineveh and Kirkuk, the native Kurdish population is disputing the results that favored the recently arrived Arab community. A special court will hear that plea, and one expects other areas in Iraq-Nam will follow suit. As any old election hand from any democracy in the world can attest, recounts (and especially manual recounts like that proposed for Baghdad) are great for fraud and theft of the election.

The US, which is trying to get its troops out of Iraq-Nam, is pushing a compromise a la the British Labour Party of Blair and Brown, with Messrs. Allawi and al-Maliki taking turns at being PM for 2 years each. It is hard to see that happening because of the religious differences between the two factions. Moreover, this would require the marginalization of the Kurds (a really bad idea if Iraq-Nam is to avoid separatism) and of the Iraqi National Alliance [INA], the other Shi'ite bloc primarily made up of religious parties (the largest faction of which is that of Moqtada al-Sadr, the future Ayatollah Khomeini of Iraq-Nam).

The best comment one has seen yet on the whole situation comes from Atheel al-Nujaifi, a leading figure in the Iraqiya slate, who told the Washington Post, "We are facing a dangerous slippery slope. No one can predict its consequences." Thus far, the violence isn't as bad as in 2006. However, the Sadrists have already threatened to put the Madhi Army back on the streets. If the Kurds and the INA feel locked out, and if Iraqiya believes it has had the election stolen from it, there could well be a re-run of 2006.

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