Word: als
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...Al-Maliki has refused to accept the poll results, announced on March 26, and has demanded a recount - even though the election was certified by U.N. observers as largely aboveboard. The incumbent has also won from the Supreme Court an interpretation of Iraq's constitution that could prevent Allawi from having first bite at forming a new government. The constitution requires that the "bloc" with the most seats be given 30 days to form a ruling coalition, but in response to al-Maliki's inquiry, the court has ruled that bloc doesn't mean electoral slate, but rather the alliances...
...will al-Maliki be unhappy about the efforts of others to trim Allawi's advantage before then. The Justice and Accountability (formerly De-Baathification) Commission, which operates under the guidance of Ahmed Chalabi - the onetime Pentagon favorite now running on the Iran-backed Iraqi National Alliance (INA) slate - announced on Tuesday its intention to demand that the Supreme Court disqualify as ineligible three candidates on Allawi's list because of alleged ties to the former regime of Saddam Hussein. If the court upholds this challenge - and it has sympathetically received the commission's previous effort to expel Sunni candidates - al...
...Despite the secular-nationalist orientation of both al-Maliki's and Allawi's slates, the election results showed a familiar sectarian split. Most Sunnis voted for Allawi's Iraqiya list, while the Shi'ite vote was split between al-Maliki's State of Law slate and that of the INA, representing the Shi'ite Islamist parties that had put al-Maliki in power. If al-Maliki could mend the rift in the Shi'ite vote and cut a deal with the INA (which won 70 seats), that combination alone would put him just four seats shy of a majority...
...clear victory. Some leading members of his bloc have warned that violence would be the consequence if the Iraqiya list were denied what they consider to be their right to lead the government. Iraq's Sunnis have been suspicious of the Shi'ite-led government of al-Maliki, not without reason, and there has been an acute sense of betrayal among the former insurgents who joined the Sunni Awakening, which facilitated the success of the U.S. troop surge, only to find themselves stiffed by al-Maliki's government...
...working assumption of Iraqi politics has been that no ethnic group or sect can be excluded from a share of power without the risk of creating dangerous instability. And that may be more true than ever, after the Sunnis came in from the cold, first in turning on al-Qaeda, and then in participating in the election. But despite some perfunctory efforts to include some Sunni representation, addressing Sunni communal aspirations has never been al-Maliki's priority. And the arithmetic of inclusion has become vastly more difficult now that the Sunnis believe they won the election. (Watch TIME...