By Dave Anderson:
The New York Times reports that the current government of Iraq which is made up of the three major Shi'ite blocs (Sadrists, Dawa and SIIC/SCIRI), along with the Kurdish Alliance and a smattering of smaller parties of one-note voters is being re-formed with some tweaks:
The electoral coalitions of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and the other major Shiite bloc in Iraq announced a postelection alliance on Tuesday night that cleared the way for a Shiite-dominated government for the next four years....
The new alliance � not unlike the one that emerged after Iraq�s last parliamentary election in 2005 � strengthens the position of the country�s main Shiite parties but does not yet guarantee Mr. Maliki re-election for a second term....The two Shiite blocs together won 159 seats, according to preliminary tabulations, only four seats short of a majority in the new Parliament. It is widely expected that the Kurds, who won 57 seats, will now join them, though only after trying to extract concessions on greater sovereignty and territorial claims in the north. The question of who will lead the alliance � and thus serve as prime minister � remains a matter of dispute among the Shiite parties.
This is completely non-shocking and predictable:
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....
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....
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.
Reconciliation in the Iraqi context means the losers of the civil war can reconcile themselves to being the losers.
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