Iraq’s uncertainty

 Iraq's uncertainty

Arab News

Al-Maliki should facilitate Allawi's formation of a stable government

A recount of 2.5 million votes in Baghdad has shown there was no fraud as alleged by outgoing Premier Nuri Al-Maliki. The election result therefore remains unaffected.  The main challenger, Iyad Allawi, remains two seats ahead of Al-Maliki's Shiite coalition. Now fully two months after the general election, it is high time Iraq's political leaders quit their squabbling and formed a new government.

Al-Maliki may have had grounds to question the results in the capital where his coalition won the most seats. However, the Independent High Electoral Commission's (IHEC) rejection of his fraud allegations ought to be the turning point in this dangerously protracted process.  It is hard to dismiss suspicions that Al-Maliki's recount call was a desperate and cynical maneuver to delay the inevitable. Iraq's voters gave no single group a clear mandate. It is therefore up to the politicians to cut the inevitable deal and form a new and stable government.

This two-month hiatus has only given heart to the insurgents and provided despair for millions of ordinary citizens who wanted more from their elected leaders. The election was never about power pure and simple but about the allocation of power across a rainbow mix of parties that would have perforce to work together. Yet Al-Maliki and his allies, whatever their intentions, have given a depressing impression of politicians scrambling to hang on to power by any means possible.  The tragedy is that still lodged alarmingly within the body politic is the idea that any one community can dominate.  Iraq does indeed have a Shiite majority but by no means all the Shiite voted the Al-Maliki coalition. Indeed a significant minority, along with many Sunnis, appears to have backed Iyad Allawi's secular Iraqiya grouping. Allawi, himself a Shiite, has made no secret of his vision that Iraq will be governed by Iraqis for Iraqis. He rejects outside interference, both from Washington and also from Teheran whose backing from the militant followers of Moqtada Sadr has caused widespread concern. On paper, the avowedly secular Iraqiya grouping offers the biggest umbrella for a diverse range of ethnic and political interests. Premier Al-Maliki's administration achieved many things, including the growing power and efficiency of the country's security forces.  However, in many other areas, such as the restoration of shattered infrastructure, his government did less well. Ironically the Shiite stronghold of Basra is a outstandingly bad example of how the outgoing government failed to come to grips with the problems of shattered sewerage and water systems and still irregular power supplies. Had the government poured the necessary resources into just one location, such as Basra, to prove what it could achieve, its reputation might have been stronger.

As it is, on a performance level alone, the Al-Maliki administration failed. It is surely because of this, rather than because of any Sunni/Baathist conspiracy, that voters narrowly rejected his State of Law bloc.  Therefore unless Al-Maliki can pull some unsuspected rabbit out of the political hat, he needs to stand back and even perhaps facilitate Allawi's formation of a new and stable coalition government.