The Hindu : Front Page : Shias win most votes in Iraq

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Feb 14, 2005

Front Page

Front Page

Shias win most votes in Iraq

By Atul Aneja

MANAMA, FEB. 13. A Shia-dominated coalition has won nearly half the votes cast in the January 30 election, raising the prospects of the formation of such a government for the first time in the history of Iraq.

Official results announced today said the alliance of Kurdish parties was in the second place, winning about 26 per cent of the 8.5 million votes cast. The party of the U.S.-backed interim Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, was in the third place, polling only 13.8 per cent of the ballots.

Iraq's election commission said that it would receive complaints for a three-day period. The results would become final if none of them was upheld.

The commission said that the turnout stood at around 58%, but much of the Sunni minority, which comprises the second largest community in Iraq, did not take part.

The United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) — a coalition of religious Shia candidates, backed by Iraq's top spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, won 48.1 per cent of the vote. It received more than four million votes, while the Kurdish alliance got more than two million votes. Mr. Allawi's Iraqiah party received a little over one million of the ballots.

Today's announcement confirmed the low turnout among the Sunnis. Only two per cent of eligible Iraqis in the Sunni Arab-dominated Anbar province voted, and only 29 per cent in the mainly Sunni Salahadin province. In the Nineveh province, which has many Sunni Arabs as well as Kurds, the turnout stood at 17 per cent.

Kurdish parties' role

With the Iraqi elections held under the system of proportional representation, the UIA will receive nearly half of the seats in the 275-member transitional assembly. It could have a decisive influence in the new assembly, in case it managed to form an alliance with the Kurdish parties. The Kurdish parties are expected to hold the balance of power in the assembly and have declared that they want the post of president, while the UIA is likely to nominate a Prime Minister.

There have been write-ups in the Iraqi press that Mr. Allawi was negotiating with the Kuridsh parties in order to form a government. Such a possibility is now ruled out as a government can be formed only if a two-thirds majority in parliament is mustered.

Negotiations ahead

Government formation could take several weeks in order to give time for negotiations that would result in a line-up that was acceptable to all ethnic and religious groups.

The new assembly will pick a President and his two deputies who, in turn, will have to choose a Prime Minister.According to the interim constitution, the new National Assembly will write a permanent one by August 15. If the initial deadline is met, the country's new basic law will be submitted to a referendum on October 15. Elections for a new constitutionally elected government are slated for December 15.

Ally of Teheran

AP, Reuters report from Baghdad:

Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the turbaned pro-Iranian cleric heading the Shia ticket that won Iraq's national elections, is a long-time ally of Teheran's religious establishment and had led an anti-Saddam Hussein militia for two decades while in exile.

Aged in his 50s, al-Hakim was born in the city of Najaf and is the son of the late Grand Ayatollah Mohsen al-Hakim, one of the leading Shia clerics of the 20th century.

A student of Najaf's Hawza al-Ilmiyah, Shia Islam's centuries old seminary, al-Hakim also came under the tutelage of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Sadr, leader of Iraq's first Shia political party, the Islamic Dawa, who was killed by Saddam's regime in 1980.

Influenced by both his father and al-Sadr, al-Hakim became an active opponent of Saddam, a secular Sunni who violently repressed opposition Shia activists in Iraq. Such retribution forced al-Hakim and his elder half-brother, Mohammad Baqr al-Hakim, to flee into Shia-run Iran in the early 1980s.

From there, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim led the Iran-backed Badr Brigades, the military wing of Iraq's largest opposition Shia party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, in a violent cross border struggle against Saddam's forces.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Front Page

News Update

Stories in this Section

Shias win most votes in Iraq

Package for Jharkhand in next session: Manmohan

I was offered money to turn against police: Ravi Subramaniam

Aero-India 2005 signs off in style

Jawans safe

Geelani to speak out

Nepal rebels reject talks offer

Blockade hits transport in Nepal

Natwar for new bus service