Shiite, Kurdish alliances look for big election win

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraq’s main Shiite Muslim alliance expects to win the biggest share in the country’s National Assembly but not enough to push through a political agenda or claim the prime minister’s job without support from other parties – notably the Kurds.

Although no official results from Sunday’s election have been announced, officials of the United Iraqi Alliance, endorsed by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, say they expect to claim roughly half the 275 seats. The Alliance leader, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, told an Iraqi television station Tuesday night that his ticket “has achieved a wide victory in the elections.”

That figure, in line with pre-election predictions, appears based on reports from the alliance’s poll watchers, who were on hand for the first-round counting that began at local precincts late Sunday.

The ticket headed by interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite backed by the United States, is running second in central and southern Iraq, according to politicians from several factions.

In the Kurdish-run areas of the north, however, the Kurdish Alliance – a coalition of the two major Kurdish parties – is expected to win so many votes that it could surpass Allawi in the final national tally.

An official with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two largest groups on the Kurdish list, said his group expected to win up to 65 seats. Kurds make up about 20 percent of Iraq’s 26 million people and voted in large numbers in their northern autonomous region.

According to the interim constitution, the National Assembly will elect a president and two deputies by a two-thirds majority. The president and his deputies then will choose a prime minister, who forms the new government.

With Allawi and the Kurds appearing to have done well at the polls, the Shiite alliance is unlikely to win the two-thirds majority it would need to secure the prime minister’s job.

Even without final vote results, the political maneuvering has begun. On the day after the election, Allawi appeared on television urging national unity and promising to work to produce a government that included all segments of Iraq’s diverse religious and ethnic communities.

That appeared to have been a subtle dig at the Shiite Alliance. Although that ticket includes some Sunnis, it is widely seen – especially by Sunni Arabs – as the voice of the Shiite clergy.

The two major parties in the Shiite Alliance – the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and Dawa – have close ties to Iran, where many of the group’s leaders spent years in exile when Saddam Hussein was in power.

In searching for allies, the group is believed to be looking toward the Kurds. Both Shiites and Kurds suffered more than Sunnis under Saddam’s rule. Before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, the Kurds allowed elements of the Shiite’s Badr Brigade militia to cross from Iran into Kurdish-controlled territory in the north.

“We have agreed with the Kurds and the others to keep these coalitions even after the elections,” al-Hakim told Al-Arabiya television. “We are still insisting to form a partnership government formed by all the segments of the Iraqi people.”

Yet despite their shared memories of oppression under Saddam, the Shiites and Kurds have separate agendas that could make it difficult to maintain an alliance. The top priority for the Kurds is to ensure the new constitution guarantees them self-rule in the north.

Although the Shiite Alliance has carefully avoided a hard-line Islamic agenda, key figures were upset over parts of the interim constitution pushed by the United States before the transfer of sovereignty last June.

Chief among the complaints were changes in family law granting women more rights in divorce and downplaying the role of Islam as the foundation of Iraqi law. The Kurds would be unlikely to accept such a platform without firm guarantees of self-rule in exchange.

They also want the country’s presidency – a post that was denied them in favor of a Sunni Arab in the negotiations leading to the interim government. The Kurds maintain the Sunni Arabs have squandered their right to hold the presidency because many boycotted the weekend elections.