Iraq counts votes after election marred by violence

Iraqi authorities counted votes on Monday, a day after a parliamentary election that Islamist militants tried to disrupt with attacks that killed 38 people.

Preliminary results were not expected for another day or two in a poll that Iraqis sickened by years of violence hope will help bring stability and better governance as US troops leave.

Prime minister Nuri al-Maliki's State of Law list claimed it was on course for victory in Baghdad and Iraq's Shi'ite south, a claim that could not be verified but which, at least in the south, appeared to be backed by informal, early vote tallies.                                           

"The State of Law Coalition list is leading among other lists in Baghdad and other southern provinces," said Ali al-Dabbagh, government spokesman and State of Law candidate. Maliki faces a stiff challenge from his former Shi'ite Islamist allies grouped in the Iraqi National Alliance (INA).                                           

The powerful Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (ISCI), which is part of that bloc, said the vote appeared evenly split between Maliki and INA in early counting.

Former prime minister Iyad Allawi's secular, cross-sectarian list, which had won the backing of many minority Sunnis who view Maliki's Shi'ite-led government with suspicion, was running third, ISCI said on its website.                                           

In Iraqi Kurdistan, a new party was challenging president Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of two groups that have dominated Kurdish politics for decades.

A robust showing by the reformist Goran list could weaken the hand of the PUK and Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party in any coalition talks in Baghdad. The relative cohesion of the Kurds has allowed them to play kingmaker in the past. 

There was no overall turnout figure, but election officials said it was 61% in the sprawling Sunni province of Anbar and 70% in Kirkuk, a northern oil province at the heart of a bitter territorial dispute between Arabs and Kurds.                                           

The scale of the Sunni vote will indicate whether Sunnis feel they have a real stake in Iraq's nascent democracy after the shock of the US-led 2003 invasion, when they lost their relatively privileged position under Saddam Hussein.                                          

Many Sunnis felt targeted when a Shi'ite-led panel vetoed around 500 candidates, including a top Sunni politician, before the vote, for alleged links to Saddam's outlawed Baath party.

Sunnis felt under-represented after the 2005 election for a full-term parliament, which sealed the grip on power of majority Shi'ites and minority Kurds oppressed by Saddam.                                  

POLITICAL FRAGMENTATION                                          
Factions representing those ethnic and sectarian communities have since fragmented. Some have forged alliances that cross communal lines, although new combinations may well emerge in arduous post-election talks to form a new coalition government.   

The negotiations, inevitable given that no one party is likely to command a majority in the 325-seat assembly, will test Iraq's fragile democracy as the United States halves its troop presence to 50,000 and ends combat operations by Aug. 31.   

US president Barack Obama aims to bring all US forces home from Iraq by end-2011, a timetable that US officials say could only be jeopardised by a dire security deterioration. Iraqi factions took five months to cobble together a coalition government last time. It may be harder now.                                           

"In a country like Iraq, winning an election does not confer legitimacy. That only comes with effective governance," said David Mack, a scholar at the Middle East Institute.                                           

"Assuming Maliki has a narrow plurality, he will find it very hard to form a government. His decision to play the de-Baathification card in the run up to the election makes it nearly impossible to form a cross-sectarian coalition of national unity," he said.

"On the other hand, if he forms a governing coalition with the Shi'ite religious parties ... the prospects for instability will increase," said Mack, a former US ambassador.

Some politicians, notably Allawi, have already criticised the conduct of the election, although foreign observers said privately that technically it appeared to have gone well.    

Allawi complained about the way the Independent High Electoral Commission had handled the voting. "As the votes are counted, the great number of Iraqis who risked their safety to take part in these elections are watching," he said.                                           

Faraj al-Haidari, head of the electoral commission, reacted sharply. "We call on the political entities and candidates to accept the results whatever they are, and not to cast doubts on the results," he told a news conference late on Sunday.