Rivals cry fraud as Al Maliki posts mixed early results
Outcome from five provinces as expected
Dubai: Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki posted mixed results in initial returns yesterday from Iraq's parliamentary election, and a rival grouping complained of serious fraud.
Results from five provinces, the first to be posted by the electoral commission, were in line with expectations and did not include Baghdad and other hard-to-predict areas that could prove pivotal for the Shiite premier's bid to remain in power.
They showed Al Maliki ahead in the largely Shiite south, while secularist rival Iraqiya, led by former prime minister Eyad Allawi, was polling well among Iraq's Sunni minority.
Iraqiya, which has emerged as a major challenger to Al Maliki, listed a series of alleged violations, saying some of its votes had been removed from boxes, thrown in the garbage and replaced by other ballots.
Analysts in Baghdad told Gulf News that it is too early to predict the shape of the new government.
"Even if the bloc of Al Maliki, the State of Law, emerges as the biggest winner from this election, this does not mean that it will have a free hand to rule the country," said Mohsin Al Jaberi, an Iraqi political analyst.
According to Al Jaberi, no single bloc will get a majority, which is 163 seats out of the 325 seats in the parliament, so an alliance will have to be formed.
Presidency
Al Jaberi said the election of the President will be more difficult because the two major Kurdish groups that allied themselves with Al Maliki in exchange for the presidency in 2006 seem to have lost their strength in the new parliament because of an off-shoot Kurdish group that split the Kurdish vote.
The election of the President requires the agreement of at least 217 MPs.
Al Jaberi said Al Maliki's bloc was expected to win 80 to 90 seats in the parliament.
