Fester's Place

Cleavage

Well the final electoral results from Iraq are coming in, and with the redistribution of the non-qualifying partie's remainders, it looks like the Sistani list has a clear majority by itself, and can easily ally with the Kurds to get the 2/3rds needed for significant changes and ratification procedures. Now looking at this list provided by Juan Cole (permalink down, something screwy on my end)


United Iraqi Alliance (Shiite): 133 seats
Kurdish Alliance: 71
Iraqiya (Allawi = Secular Shiites) 38
Iraqiyyun (al-Yawir= Sunni Arabs) 5
Turkmen Front of Iraq 3
Cadres and the Chosen (Sadrist Shiites) 3

What can we say? The easiest thing to say is that the the Sunni's sat this one out. Turnout in Al-Anbar province, home of Fallujah, Ramadi and Quam, was under 4,000 voters, and total Sunni led party votes were roughly 3.5-4.0% of the vote. The Sunnis are cleaved from the political process and that was one of the goals of the insurgents; ensure that they had a base of aggreived and alienated people who did not believe that the political process would be a fruitful or effective way to redress their grievances.

Labels: insurgency, iraq

posted by fester @ 06:43