Stratfor » March 19, 2010 | 1602 GMT
Iraq’s Alsumaria News, citing the latest results from the country’s election commission, on March 19 showed what appears to be the first breakdown of seats in the Iraqi parliament after the March 7 elections. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s State of Law (SoL) coalition won 91 seats. Former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s Iraqiya List is a close second, with 88 seats. A Shiite sectarian coalition, the Iraqi National Alliance (INA), is in third place with 68 seats, while the Kurdistani Alliance (KA) garnered 39 seats.
The biggest development was the rise of Allawi’s non-sectarian Iraqi nationalist coalition, which swept the polls in the Sunni provinces of Anbar, Ninawa and Salah ad Din, and has performed strongly in the ethnically mixed provinces of Diyala and Kirkuk and Baghdad.
While the Sunnis largely rejected sectarian forces, the Shiite vote remained in favor of sectarian forces – albeit divided between SoL and INA. Meanwhile, the main Kurdish bloc appears to have seen a substantial (though expected) drop in their parliamentary strength for two reasons: Sunni participation in the election and the rise of smaller Kurdish parties.
Intense negotiations among the various winning blocs are under way. The biggest question is whether Allawi’s bloc, which now represents the Sunnis, can be part of a grand coalition government. SoL, INA and KA have more than the required 163 seats to form a government. But that would put the Sunnis’ representatives in the opposition – an outcome that translates into instability in the country. Also, given his bloc’s performance, Allawi will make many demands in any power-sharing negotiations, especially since al-Maliki will want to retain the prime ministerial post since his party has the most seats and he has a post-electoral alliance understanding with the INA.
It is clear that the Shia need to include Allawi in the next government, but it is too early to say how it will happen. The United States would like to see Allawi and al-Maliki work together and contain Iranian influence in Iraq. But the Iranians are well aware of the Shiite divide between SoL and INA and got the two blocs to agree to a post-electoral alliance well before the vote. Tehran also knew that Iraq’s Sunnis would participate in the election in full force this time and has been operating accordingly. This is why the Iranians will try to get a SoL-INA-KA grand alliance to negotiate with Allawi’s Iraqiya List in order to contain the Sunnis.