Shocking
Richard Engel, blogging for NBC from Bagdad had this to say about the election results thus far:Instead, the Shiite Islamic list, despite the horrible performance of the Shiite-led government led over the past eight months, did much better than generally anticipated.Bush's guy is getting killed (not literally....yet). The group closely affiliated with Iran is taking more than expected. Sunni's are not doing as well as their over-inflated ego's suggested they should. And everyone has plenty of firepower.
Sunni Arabs faired a bit worse than experts had predicted, and far worse than the unrealistic impression they had of themselves; many Sunnis believe they are the majority in this country.
One insider said Allawi ended up competing with Sunnis for seats, instead of taking power from the Shiites.
In the end, it looks like we can expect a Shiite prime minister from the Islamic bloc close to Iran. The big battles will be over the defense and interior ministries.
Any guesses about what's next?
(BTW, that's not the Iraqi flag above :)
posted by greyhair @ 6:27 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Iraq is just gonna get uglier. The Sunnis are not going to have the parliamentary votes to amend the constitution as they were promised when they apporved it, and they're top politicians are already making veiled threats of further violence.
And today, I came across a reference to some bizarre election regulation that was put in place that will require the Shias to give up some of the seats they won in an effort to protect minority voting power.
So, the Sunnis will have no influence, and the Shias are going to have to give up seats they won.
Sounds like everybody's gonna be happy with this result, eh?
Mike
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