Word: allawi
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...troops prepare to depart appear increasingly uncertain. Preliminary returns released Thursday from four of Iraq's 18 provinces show the incumbent, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, carrying predominantly Shi'ite areas - despite a strong challenge from supporters of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Former U.S.-installed Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shi'ite who, like Maliki, leads a broad nationalist coalition with strong Sunni Arab representation, appears to have prevailed in predominantly Sunni areas north of Baghdad...
...Maliki is unlikely to win a majority, and would need coalition partners - perhaps from among the Kurdish nationalist parties that again polled strongly enough in their own areas to potentially earn a kingmaking role in Baghdad, or from the Sadrists and other Shi'ite Islamist parties, or even from Allawi's bloc. But Allawi has alleged widespread fraud by his opponent's supporters, setting the stage for a potentially violent struggle over the election's legitimacy. For many Sunnis who voted for the first time on Sunday, being told that the election was rigged against them would reinforce their alienation...
...devolved to the regions, especially the Shi'ite-dominated south and the Kurdish north. Those pushing centralization include Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Shi'ite dominated State of Law coalition, and the ideologically similar, but more Sunni and more secular, Iraqiya coalition, led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. Pushing for decentralization are the ruling parties of the Kurdistan Regional Government - the Kurdish enclave of northern Iraq - and an alliance of Shi'te parties led by Ammar al-Hakim, Ahmed Chalabi and Moqtada al-Sadr among others - which critics claim is bent on creating a semiautonomous Shi'ite enclave...
...Maliki's main rival is former Prime Minster Iyad Allawi's Iraqiya coalition, which also favors a stronger central government. Allawi's coalition is billing itself as a more secular alternative to the current government, and draws more support from Sunni groups, who are going to play a more significant role in this election than in 2005, when they boycotted the political process in protest of the American occupation. (See pictures of the U.S. troops in Iraq...
Because several top Sunni leaders - including Saleh al-Mutlaq, head of a secular coalition that includes former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi - are among those now banned from running in the election, the move is being widely perceived by the country's Sunnis as an attempt by the Shi'ite-dominated government to limit the expected gains by Sunni parties in the coming contest. And it also appears that the targets of the commission are more than just Sunni politicians but also rivals of President Nouri al-Maliki and his supporters on the Accountability and Justice Commission (including its co-chair...