Iraq’s Shiite alliance won election
(Middle East Online)
Updated: 2006-02-11 09:49

BAGHDAD - Iraq on Friday confirmed the conservative Shiite United Iraqi Alliance as the winners of the December elections with 128 seats of the 275-member parliament.

Chief election commissioner Adel al-Lami read the final certified results which were the same as provisional ones announced on January 20.

The final results gave 128 seats to the Shiite alliance, 53 for the Kurdish Alliance, 44 for the Sunni-led National Concord Front and 25 for former premier Iyad Allawi's Iraqi National List.

The remaining 25 seats in the parliament are held by smaller parties. Eleven of them are held by Sunni politician Saleh al-Motlak's Iraqi National Conference, with the rest going to small minority groupings like the Turkmen, Christians and a Kurdish Islamist party.

In the three weeks since the uncertified results were given, 24 complaints by nearly every political party were examined by the Transitional Electoral Panel, led by the chief judge of Iraq's highest court.

"The judicial commission examined the 24 complaints and these did not change the results," said Lami.

According to the constitution, the new parliament should sit within the next 15 days.

Lami also said that women parliamentarians will constitute more than 25 percent of the 275-member legislature.

"I salute these women, and their numbers in the Iraqi parliament will be more than some of the developing countries and even some democratic countries," Lami said.

He said of the total votes cast during the December 15 polls, nearly 12 million were valid, while 139,656 were invalid.

UN representative in Iraq Ashraf Qazi welcomed the results, but said that the new government had a key challenge of safeguarding human rights.

"I urge the political leaders to quickly form the new government and offer stability and security to Iraq," Qazi said in a statement.

"There are many challenges but human rights is the main concern."

Two parliamentarians close to the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr have decided to support the alliance which gives it a total of 130 seats.

Meanwhile, the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance was set to select its prime ministerial candidate on Saturday.

The four candidates include the current Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari of the Dawa Party, with the others coming from different factions of the alliance - Adel Abdel Mahdi of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Nadim Jabiri of the Fadhila party, and Hussein Shahristani of the Shiite independents.