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Official: Early poll results expected from Baghdad

Arab World Materials 13 March 2010 13:44 (UTC +04:00)
Iraq's electoral commission was poised to announce early results from Baghdad on Saturday, an elections official said, nearly a week after polls closed.
Official: Early poll results expected from Baghdad

Iraq's electoral commission was poised to announce early results from Baghdad on Saturday, an elections official said, nearly a week after polls closed.

The religiously and ethnically diverse capital is by far the largest electoral prize in what early returns released over the past two days have showed will likely be a tight race. Baghdad will contribute 68 out of 325 seats in the new parliament, DPA reported.

"The electoral commission will announce early results from Baghdad as 30 per cent of ballot boxes have been counted," an official from Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) told the German Press Agency dpa, on condition of anonymity.

Such promises of announcements of early results from the March 7 elections have been followed by delays in the past, leading some to cry foul.

As Iraqi politicians traded accusations of fraud in the vote count, senior Shiite cleric Abdel-Mahdi al-Karbala'i used his Friday sermon to call on the electoral commission to announce those results quickly, to avoid 'suspicions and doubts' about the fairness of the elections.

Results announced so far have shown a tight race between Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition and former prime minister Ayad Allawi's Iraqi List, with an alliance of mostly religious Shiite parties close behind.

Abdallah Iskandar, a member of parliament running with the State of Law coalition, on Saturday told dpa he expected the coalition to win 100 seats in the new parliament.

"There are no red lines in the State of Law's negotiations on forming a coalition," he said.

So far, al-Maliki's coalition is leading in three Shiite provinces south of Baghdad, and in the eastern Baghdad district of Rusafa, while Allawi's coalition was leading in two northern provinces and the north Baghdad district of al-Karkh.

The Iraqi National Alliance (INA), led by religious Shiite parties, is leading in early results from the southern province of Maysan, and is running second-place in three other provinces and the Baghdad district of Rusafa.

If the INA continues to fare well when final results are announced, its seats could provide a crucial component in a coalition government.

But Ammar al-Hakim, who heads the SICI, and al-Maliki are traditional rivals. SICI, one of the largest mainstream Shiite parties, wants the prime minister to be from its ranks.

Al-Maliki's Dawaa Party would like the prime minister to be one of its members.

This might suggest an alliance between the INA and Allawi's Iraqi List, but the SICI's coalition partners from Shiite preacher Muqtada al-Sadr's political movement bear a grudge against Allawi for the 2004 military campaign he and US forces waged against them, complicating the prospects of an INA-Iraqi List alliance.

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