By Dave Anderson:
The Allawi led Iraqqiya list won the plurality in the Iraqi parliamentary elections. Iraqqiya won 91 seats to Maliki's State of Law 89 seats. Neither list is anywhere close to a majority on their own as each won slightly more than a quarter of all seats. Iraqqiya is basically a coalition of the losers of the Iraqi civil war; Sunni Arabs and secular Shi'ites. This is important to remember as shenanigans have ensued.
Adam Silverman at Sic Semper Tyrannis has a good overview of the basic political dynamic and the background on the shenanigans:
The Shi�a Lists, the State of Law and the Iraqi National Alliance, each one has enough votes that an all Shi�a Iraqi coalition could get very close to the minimum number required to form a coalition government. 163 seats is the magic number and the two Shi�a Lists, if they were to combine, have 159! Given that this Iraqi election was run as a type of first past the post system; whoever gets 163 outright forms the government, if no one gets 163 seats, then whichever List or Party gets the most votes, a plurality, gets the right to try to form the new government...
The most immediate problem isn�t that Iraqqiya, the List of Iyad Allawi, will not be able to form a coalition with other Lists or by splitting parties out of other Lists, but that its right to try to form the next government by getting the largest electoral plurality of 91 seats will be invalidated either through recount manipulation or other dirty tricks. At least six members of the Iraqqiya list that have been elected to the new Parliament have been indicted for terrorism and arrest warrants have been issued for their arrests. If they are arrested, or just flee what they are themselves claiming are politically motivated malicious prosecutions to influence the outcome of the election, then the issue will become that PM Maliki�s State of Law List will now have the largest plurality and will be the List asked to try to form the new government!
As Dr. Silverman notes, the two major Shi'ite lists almost have an outright majority if they are able to keep their entire list onside. There is some rumbling that the Badrists/SIIC are haggling for a defection from the INA list, but that is not yet confirmed. It is very plausible that the current government of Iraq can be reconstituted with only minor changes around the edges as various factions gained or lost a few seats here and there.
That would not be a massive problem if the Iraqqiya list was given a legitimate chance at forming a coalition government as that would give legitimacy to the electoral process as well as including the losers of the civil war into the political process. Enhanced political legitimacy would be an overall net good for almost everyone in Iraq.
However, if the Iraqqiya list is barred from attempting to form a coalition government and the SOL, INA and Kurdistan Alliance basically re-establish the current Iraqi government even if there is a different prime minister, then the message is clear; the losers can suck on it as the political system has no more rules than Machiavellian Calvinball.
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