Word: sadr
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...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 a coalition with his political bloc. (See a TIME photographer's Iraq diary...
...Maliki did send a delegation to the Iranian city of Qum last weekend to seek the backing of Iraqi Shi'ite firebrand cleric al-Sadr, whose supporters are the largest and most influential element within the INA. Indeed, with some 40 seats won by his followers, al-Sadr has emerged as a potential kingmaker. His enmity toward al-Maliki is well established, however, especially since al-Maliki unleashed the Iraqi military on al-Sadr's supporters in Basra in 2008. Al-Sadr has warned that he would veto a second term for al-Maliki, and so the Prime Minister...
...results currently are so close - with current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki neck-and-neck with former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, and the movement of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr emerging with what may be a kingmaker's share of the vote - that Iraq could see months of deadlock that will do little to boost the country's faith in its politicians. Moreover, the election results have broken down along depressingly familiar sectarian and the ethnic fault lines - although with the authority of the traditional ethnic and sectarian parties weakening in a manner that will further complicate efforts...
...risk by separating himself from the Shi'ite Iraqi National Alliance (INA) that had propelled him to power, but struggled nonetheless to present himself as a truly national figure. While he had cracked down hard against terrorism and militias, especially the radical Shi'ite followers of Moqtada al Sadr, his support for a government de-Ba'athification committee that banned 500 parliamentary candidates - including many key Sunni politicians - a few weeks before the election appears to have helped fuel Sunni suspicion that he harbored a sectarian agenda. Maliki's troubles have been a boon to the Sadrists, who entered...
...Movement, led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, is likewise in favor of a strong central government. The push for decentralization is represented by the ruling parties of the Kurdistan Regional Government and an alliance of Shi'ite parties - led by Ammar al-Hakim and chastened warlord Muqtada al-Sadr, among others - that critics claim is bent on creating a semiautonomous Shi'ite enclave in oil-rich southern Iraq...