Shi'ite List Comes Top in Iraqi Election

[Warren Stupidity]

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An alliance of Shi'ite Islamist groups won the most votes in Iraq (news - web sites)'s election, but the percentage it received -- 47.6 percent -- was lower than many expected, according to the final tally released on Sunday.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050213/wl_nm/iraq_dc&cid=574&ncid=1480

After two weeks of 'counting ballots' is anybody shocked that the UIA, the shiite 'list' has now suddenly done worse than expected?

Sistani played by the rules and now he has been screwed. What is his next move?

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. A little worse, but will that make any difference?

Apparently, they need to get the selection of the president agreed by two thirds of the assembly. So the likely outcome was always going to be the UIA and Kurds in a coalition (it now turns out that the UIA and Allawi's list couldn't form a coalition on their own anyway, but that was thought unlikely, since they don't like each other).

[jmatthan]

2. This does not seem right

Shite 47.6
Kurds 25
Allawi 13.5

My arithmetic shows this to be 86.1%

Where has 13.9% of the vite vanished to?

They appear to be adjusting the vote so that opposition to Shiites will add up to more than Shiite percentage!!

Jacob Matthan
Oulu, Finland

[expatriot]

3. There were more than one hundred lists.... but I agree

I have been deeply suspicious that the whole reason for the "recount" was to make sure Sistani's list had less than 50%.

[Warren Stupidity]

4. exactly

But why would sistani put up with this? They know that they won the election by a much bigger margin, that they have the right to claim all of the top posts and a parlimentary majority big enough to write the constitution their way.

Sistani could continue to work inside the framework established by the occupation forces, or he can take to the streets. My guess is that he will use his 'bad mullah' al sadr to go to the streets while sistani, in the role of the 'good mullah' continues to work within the framework.

[PsychoDad]

5. like the US "election"

The results have been rigged just enough. Too much of a shift away from the real results would result in numbers that even the sleeping american voter would have noticed as being bogus.

Unlike americans, I think the people of Iraq will notice.

This still gives the shia parties a majority, but not one which in american ocupation eyes would shift the control of the government out of colonial rule.

I expect, that as with everything this junta has gambled on, it will fail.

[barb162]

15. weren't there a few hundred candidates and I don't know how

many parties. I suspect those other 14% went to several tiny groups

[jmatthan]

6. BBC has been contradcting itself seeral times to

play up the Bush - Blair platform.

They reported 28% Sunni vote in "some" areas, less 2 % in others and then makr a big play of how "several" Sunni's voted in Baghdad!!

No figures, except that some Sunni's that "I spoke to! said Caroline Hawley"

What would Howard Dean say to that? "Attribute the quote"!!! :-)

Jacob Matthan
http://jmatthan.blogspot.com
Oulu, Finland

[dutchdoctor]

27. I think these numbers are from the official tally..

Aljazeera has the same numbers:
"Only 2% of eligible Iraqis in the Sunni Arab-dominated Anbar province voted in the elections, and only 29% in the mainly Sunni Salahadin province, the final tally showed."
They phrase it differently though!

[cal04]

7. Iraq's Shiites set for power

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".

Three names on the list 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.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,12240351%255E1702,00.html

[diamond14]

8. will allawi just grab the money and LEAVE with his family?

allawi lived a comfortable life in England for many years...and he's no spring chicken either (almost 70 years old)....


certainly allawi "sees" the light at the end of the tunnel (light which is coming from wildly escalating VIOLENCE)....he sees the writing on the wall...


allawi has only been staying because of the BEGGING of USA...the pretend election was only done for bush* PHOTO-OPS...allawi is done with his mission...MOST of the past 6 months, allawi was rarely in Iraq...he spent the MAJORITY of his time HERE in OUR Nation's Capital, visiting dignitaries, and the pResident, and hanging around in the BEAUTIFULLY refurbished Iraqi Embassy (paid for with OUR tax money).....



US President George W. Bush(R) and Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi are seen here in 2004. Bush, poised to seek 80 billion dollars more for Iraq and Afghanistan in 2005, discussed Iraq's elections with Allawi, the White House said(AFP/File/Tim Sloan)

[Jack Rabbit]

9. Allawi still seems to harbor fantasies of holding on to power

I think one of the first orders of business of those negotiating for the make up of the transitional government is to make sure quislings like Allawi are shut out.

[blondeatlast]

11. How realistic is that?

You know the neocons have their filthy little hands in this somehow, although it's pretty to think the Iraqis won't let them have their way.

But I see this nightmare scenario that until they do things with a neocon influence, we won't get out.

[BlueManDude]

10. Allawi will be installed after a "brokered deal" (bribe)

[blondeatlast]

12. Yup.

The only suspense in this is how will the media spin it?

[BlueManDude]

18. C'mon? A "Huge Win" for Bush of course.

In the long run it will just piss off Iraqis even more.

[cal04]

13. A scenerio by msnbc about Allawi

I was also reading Sy Hersh's article, mentioning plan B, the
immediate goal after June 30th, it's worth reading

The Kurds want their candidate, Jalal Talabani, to be president or prime minister. Under one scenario, the two blocs could do a deal with a Shiite candidate getting the prime minister’s job and Talabani the presidency.

But Allawi, who visited Kurdistan on Saturday and met Talabani, may also try to form alliances to improve his chances. If he can make a deal with the Kurds and persuade some of the Shiite alliance to break away, he may be able to keep his job.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6913272/

http://newyorker.com/fact/content/?040628fa_fact

[Jack Rabbit]

14. A more likely scennario (excluding Allawi) is suggested by Naomi Klein

From The Nation
Dated Thursday February 10

Getting the Purple Finger
By Naomi Klein

The election results are in: Iraqis voted overwhelmingly to throw out the US-installed government of Iyad Allawi, who refused to ask the United States to leave. A decisive majority voted for the United Iraqi Alliance; the second plank in the UIA platform calls for "a timetable for the withdrawal of the multinational forces from Iraq."

There are more single-digit messages embedded in the winning coalition's platform. Some highlights: "Adopting a social security system under which the state guarantees a job for every fit Iraqi...and offers facilities to citizens to build homes." The UIA also pledges "to write off Iraq's debts, cancel reparations and use the oil wealth for economic development projects." In short, Iraqis voted to repudiate the radical free-market policies imposed by former chief US envoy Paul Bremer and locked in by a recent agreement with the International Monetary Fund.

So will the people who got all choked up watching Iraqis flock to the polls support these democratically chosen demands? Please. "You don't set timetables," George W. Bush said four days after Iraqis voted for exactly that. Likewise, British Prime Minister Tony Blair called the elections "magnificent" but dismissed a firm timetable out of hand. The UIA's pledges to expand the public sector, keep the oil and drop the debt will likely suffer similar fates. At least if Adel Abd al-Mahdi gets his way--he's Iraq's finance minister and the man suddenly being touted as leader of Iraq's next government.

Al-Mahdi is the Bush Administration's Trojan horse in the UIA. (You didn't think they were going to put all their money on Allawi, did you?) In October he told a gathering of the American Enterprise Institute that he planned to "restructure and privatize state-owned enterprises," and in December he made another trip to Washington to unveil plans for a new oil law "very promising to the American investors." It was al-Mahdi himself who oversaw the signing of a flurry of deals with Shell, BP and ChevronTexaco in the weeks before the elections, and it is he who negotiated the recent austerity deal with the IMF. On troop withdrawal, al-Mahdi sounds nothing like his party's platform and instead appears to be channeling Dick Cheney on Fox News: "When the Americans go will depend on when our own forces are ready and on how the resistance responds after the elections." But on Sharia law, we are told, he is very close to the clerics.

Read more.

[leftchick]

17. Exactly, you don't think the BFEE would have only one Thug up its sleeve??

Iraqi Finance Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shi'ite official who is a leading contender to be the next prime minister, flashes the victory sign after the results of the country's national elections were announced in Baghdad, February 13, 2005. The United Iraqi Alliance, which won Iraq (news - web sites)'s first election since Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s overthrow, insists that one of its candidates -- probably Mahdi-- be appointed as prime minister. Mahdi stands in front of a poster of the head of the Shi'ite alliance, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. Photo by Akram Saleh/Reuters


... Notice.. "Iraqi FINANCE Minister". Do you suppose he knows where that missing 9 BILLION is?

[Straight Shooter]

16. Sistani's next move? He declares a mandate, of course!

:evilgrin:

[EndElectoral]

19. Interesting Allawai only carried 4% of US Iraqi vote. 1/8th of Shiites

But in Iraq he carries 14.3% or a little less than 1/3rd of the Shiite vote. Something is rotten in the State of Crawford.

[leesa]

20. Ahhh...so the recount adjusted the Shiite win to a US win

How convenient! Will Sistani tolerate this fraud as well as Kerry and the Democrats did?

[Warren Stupidity]

21. iraqis, unlike americans,

are not confused by what the situation is. They look around, they see a foreign occupying army that does not speak their language, does not practice their religion, does not understand their culture. They see an army that has leveled their cities, desecrated their mosques, inflicted humiliating torture on them, killed thm in large numbers, wrecked their infrastructure, and has now manipulated the outcome of this sham election.

The only question is how will sistani deal with the situation.

[cal04]

22. I have a lot of questions about Sistani

It doesn't look like he will oppose too much of what Bush wants. I could be wrong, but if they can cheat in elections here at home, there has to be something behind all this.)

Sistani wins without a single vote
Throughout the US-led invasion in early 2003, Ayatollah Sistani stayed in his office near the burial place of Imam Ali in Najaf, one of Shiite Islam's most sacred shrines. At first, he opposed the US civilian administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer.

Mr Bremer had only been in Baghdad a few weeks when Ayatollah Sistani issued a fatwa, or religious decree, in June 2003 opposing the drawing up of a constitution by a coalition-picked council.He insisted that free and popular elections take place for a national assembly.

But when the rebellious Moqtada al-Sadr, sought a conflict with the Americans, Ayatollah Sistani declared himself opposed to any resistance to the coalition.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,12240458%255E1702,00.html

[Warren Stupidity]

24. my assumption about that

is that sistani (aka the good mullah) was biding his time pushing for elections on the assumption that his forces would win any election hands down. I further assume that he works in (perhaps loose) coordination with al sadr (the bad mullah) who provides the street forces as a threat to the occupation that if they don't paly nice with sistani they lose control of the shiite south.

However, if in fact the elections have had their results 'modified' so that sistani does not have the majority his party really won, does not have the ability to shape Iraq as they see fit, I don't see how sistani can not appear to be kowtowing to the occupation. If sistani allows this to go unchallenged then he won't have played the occupying forces, they will have played him.

[chartresbleu]

23. let's see, 47%, same as cheney predicted for kerry

come on guys, you're in a rut. if you're going to rig elections at least show a little imagination. or maybe the big "dick" had that particular number called just to subtly let evedyone know who's calling the shots. soon we'll hear how the bush adminstration has awarded diebold and/or e &s multi billion dollar contracts to send over their machines to iraq so the next elcetion will go smoothly.

[Walt Starr]

25. IMO, these rigged results have just guaranteed an Iraqi civil war

and our troops will be in the way of the violencec about to erupt.

[Toucano]

26. Big suprise.

Did anyone ever think this was going to be a legitimate election?

Like you, I'm not shocked at all. And further, I am not in awe.