Word: maying
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...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 - a difference he could easily make up by resuming his alliance with the Kurdish bloc, which garnered 43 seats. It may not be that easy, of course, because both the key element of the INA - the supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr - and the Kurdish leadership have been antagonized by al-Maliki's leadership and would prefer to see him gone. They could yet try and make replacing al-Maliki a key condition for joining...
...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...
...Allawi may be stoking resentment by blaming any move to keep him out of power on meddling by Tehran. "Iran is interfering quite heavily, and this is worrying," he told the BBC on Tuesday, noting that the Iranian leadership had invited the other major factions but not his own for talks in Tehran over the shape of the next Iraqi government...
...There may be an element of truth in that charge, because Iran has previously backed the broad Shi'ite-Kurdish alliance that brought al-Maliki to power, and is clearly pressing for another friendly, Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad. Allawi is fiercely antagonistic toward Tehran, and his bloc was strongly backed by Sunni Arab regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, which are leery of Iranian influence in Arab lands. (Those governments have been standoffish toward al-Maliki.) (See pictures of the U.S. troops in Iraq...
...Despite U.S. hopes that the election would confirm a trend toward stability in Iraq, it appears to have produced a political deadlock that may not easily be broken by the constitutional mechanisms. Months of maneuvering and brinkmanship lie ahead, with a growing threat of violence in the political vacuum. The election results appear to confirm that no single power center, local or foreign, is capable of stabilizing Iraq on its own terms. The country's prospects in the anxious months ahead may depend as much on the wisdom and statesmanship of its own politicians as on the extent of conflict...