Iraq Provincial Elections, Preliminary Results Are In

by Rob Walker | February 5, 2009 at 10:19 am

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Preliminary results in Iraq's provincial elections show that the current Prime Minister's State of Law Coalition received the biggest vote in nine out of 14 provinces, but without a clear majority.

The Sunnis appear to have more seats, going from one seat out of 57 to ten or eleven. Though there are fraud accusations and a lack of acceptance in the legitimacy in Anbar province (no one voting for the taliban? How strange).

These are the results of the main parties with 90% of the votes counted in the 14 provinces taking part in Iraq’s 2009 provincial elections, as announced by Faraj al-Haidary, the head of Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission.

Going off the newspaper Aswat al-Iraq’s tally, the Sunnis appear to have gone from one seat out of 57 to ten or eleven. One of the reasons for this: Shiite death squads have spent years cleansing Baghdad of Sunnis through intimidation and violence; and the Sunnis who used to live in Baghdad couldn’t vote there.

Iraq is on the watch for unrest in the flash-point Sunni Arab region of Anbar province when the results of the country's provincial elections are released Thursday.
Tensions are high in Anbar, where some tribal leaders affiliated with the U.S.-backed "awakening" movement have threatened violence if they lose to their rival -- the older and more entrenched group called the Iraqi Islamic Party, which some accuse of election fraud.