Electoral Commission of Iraq Seat Allocation

Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq Your Voice... Your Future

February 17, 2005 8:00 pm Seat Allocation, Seat Allocation for 18 Governorate Councils, Kurdistan National Assembly, and Transitional National Assembly.

The United Iraqi Alliance, mainly Shiite Islamist religious parties, will occupy 140 seats in the 275-seat assembly.

A Kurdish bloc, ran second, won 75 seats. The group led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite, got 40 seats.

About 8.5 million votes were cast, a turnout of agout 58 percent of the more than 14 voters. Many Sunni Muslims, at the urging of their leaders, did not vote.

FULL FILE in PDF format, Electoral Commission of Iraq Seat Allocation

Iraq Shiites set for power after decades of oppression

Iraq's main Shiite list swept to victory in the country's historic elections, finally translating the majority community's demographic weight into political power after decades under the Sunni yoke.

The United Iraqi Alliance backed by powerful Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani fell short of garnering 50 percent of the votes but the counting system laid out by the electoral law should guarantee it absolute majority in parliament.

The list won 48.1 percent of the almost 8.5 million votes cast but should hold 140 out of the National Assembly's 275 once the final results are made official. Political groups have three days in which to challenge the results.

This means the list will have to find an agreement for the choice of the presidential council, which requires a two-thirds majority approval from parliament, but will have a free hand to okay a cabinet line-up.

For Iraq's long-oppressed Shiites, who make up at least 60 percent of Iraq's estimated population of 27 million, the victory has been a long time coming.

Shiite clerics made abundant reference in the run-up to the January 30 vote to elections in 1924, when Shiites widely boycotted the polls and ended up excluding themselves from power for the next eight decades.

Instead, Iraq's Shiites worked hard to form a united front ahead of the vote, no matter how transitory it turns out to be in power.

With member parties ranging from conservative Islamists and radical clerics to fringe Sunni and Kurd groups, many observers have said the alliance will not last.

Cracks may appear soon, as the race for the prime minister's post and key ministries goes into the final furlong.

"The Shiites will remain the dominant force but not in its present form," one senior member of the alliance admitted earlier this month.

"It may only be a question of months or even weeks," said one Western election observer. "It is a matter of personalities and the breadth of issues. It was a strong electoral coalition but not a long-term alliance."

The alliance formed under the auspices of Shiite spiritual leader Sistani includes the two mainstream Shiite religious factions -- the Dawa party and the Tehran-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq -- as well as the secular Iraqi National Congress of former Pentagon favourite Ahmed Chalabi.

Three names on the list of candidates have emerged as most likely contenders for the premiership: Dawa leader Ibrahim Jaafari, Finance Minister and SCIRI member Adel Abdel Mahdi and Hussein Shahrastani, a nuclear scientist and close confidant of Sistani.

Jaafari is a religious Shiite who commands popular support unmatched by any of his competitors, with an opinion poll published last year ranking the 54-year-old as the third most influential public figure in Iraq, behind Sistani and Shiite radical leader Moqtada Sadr, neither of whom were candidates.

Abdel Mahdi has emerged as the best consensus candidate for the top job.

Once a Baath socialist, Mahdi has transformed into a staunch ultra-liberal who wants to overhaul the state apparatus and lead the country into modernity.

Abdel Mahdi's conservative SCIRI has toned down its Islamist demands in recent months and he reportedly enjoys close ties with some members of the White House's influential National Security Council.

Shahrastani, number seven on the Shiite list, is a strong advocate of healing Iraq's divisions and is seen as someone who could offer an olive branch to Sunni Arab insurgents and calm Shiite and Kurdish cries for revenge against members of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime.

The list's leaders were swift to promise the marginalised Sunnis they would be included in the political process.

But the man ultimately calling the shots in the new Iraqi government will not hold any official post.
From behind the scenes, Sistani's vision for Iraq's future appears to be that of an Islamic imprint on a secular administration.

Sistani's network has made it known that he does not want an Iranian-style theocracy, despite his Iranian nationality and close links to Tehran.

The grand ayatollah reportedly approved of the wording in Iraq's US-promulgated interim constitution, which states that "Islam is the official religion of the state and is to be considered a source of legislation."

While Sistani may take a harder line on the permanent constitution, a source close to him said he does not oppose a secular-led government.

Others say the reclusive cleric will watch from the shadows as his political troops fight the public battles over the new constitution.

SOURCE: UNAMI 2/14/2005 1:10:29 AM