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...installed Prime Minister's secular nationalist slate may have finished narrowly ahead of its nearest rival, but its share of the vote translates into only 91 seats in the 325-seat legislature, where 163 seats is the magic number needed to form a government. And while Allawi's first-place finish in the poll theoretically puts him in the pole position to build a coalition government, the odds against him achieving that are substantial, and incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is hard at work ensuring that Allawi doesn't even get the opportunity...
...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 as they present...
...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-Maliki's 89 seats could then, theoretically, be deemed to have finished first. (Watch a TIME video about Iraq's elections...
...Until now, the 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...
...networks, all of which are controlled by the government or state-owned companies, stayed with their regularly scheduled programming as the tragedy unfolded, waiting for up to two hours to provide their first substantive reports on the attacks, which killed at least 39 people. Bloggers and political commentators say the slow response of the networks - Channel One, Rossia 1 and NTV - is indicative of the state of television journalism in Russia today: the major broadcasters have been so cowed by the Kremlin over the past decade, they're incapable of effectively covering events of vital national importance. (See pictures...