Word: maliki
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...Like most elections, Iraq's is in part a referendum on the incumbent, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who is running on his record of bringing security and normal life back to Iraq. Originally chosen as a compromise candidate by rival Shi'ite leaders who expected him to be a weak prime minister, he surprised the country by consolidating power, reaching out beyond his Shi'ite base and embracing the cause of national unity. Still, Maliki's State of Law coalition has significant weaknesses. Though untouched by scandal himself, the Iraqi government is notoriously corrupt, and voters remain unhappy about...
...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...
...This time around, Maliki also has to look over his shoulder at his former Shi'ite allies, who have formed a coalition without him. The Iraqi National Alliance - led by Ammar al-Hakin, Moqtadah al-Sadr and Ahmed Chalabi among others - is more Islamist, and more friendly with Iran than Maliki's Dawa party...
...wild card this time is the Kurds. In the last elections, the two ruling parties of the Kurdish regional government - the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq - voted lock-step for a Kurdish list, giving them significant leverage with Arab Iraqi parties in post-election negotiations. But though they joined Maliki's ruling coalition and formed a government together, the Kurdish ruling parties complain that Maliki hasn't delivered on his promises to return disputed areas to Kurdish authority. This time, the Kurds may be tempted into an alliance with the anti-Maliki Shi'ites. (See pictures of Iraq's revival...
...duopolistic ruling parties of Iraqi Kurdistan find themselves under threat from a breakaway movement - Goran, or "change" - more interested in cleaning up politics in the Kurdistan Regional Government than in accelerating Kurdish autonomy from the rest of Iraq. And there's been plenty of bad blood between al-Maliki and the fundamentalist Shi'ite parties of the Iraqi National Alliance ever since the Prime Minister sent the army to put down Muqtada al-Sadr's militia in Basra...