A recount of votes from Iraq’s March general election in Baghdad resulted in no change in the allocation of seats, election officials said yesterday.
“There is no change in the number of seats for any coalition in Baghdad and in all of Iraq,” said Saad al-Rawi, an official of the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC).
IHEC official Iyad al-Kinaani and another election commission official who declined to be identified confirmed that there had been no change from the initial results.
Electoral authorities began a manual recount of votes in Baghdad, which accounts for 68 seats in Iraq’s 325-member Council of Representatives, on May 3, nearly two months after the March 7 general election.
The recount followed an appeal by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who alleged he had lost votes because of violations at polling centers in Baghdad during the ballot.
The unchanged results mean that former prime minister Iyad Allawi’s Iraqiya bloc remains in first place with 91 seats, followed closely by Maliki’s State of Law alliance with 89.
The Iraqi National Alliance, led by Shiite religious groups, was third with 70.
State of Law and the INA announced earlier this month that they would form a coalition, leaving them four seats short of a parliamentary majority.
On Saturday, al-Maliki took a major step toward staying in power when a top Shiite cleric said he would not stop him from keeping his job, although an arch-rival warned of civil war.
A spokesman for Muqtada al-Sadr, an anti-US cleric living in Iran, indicated that the movement would drop a veto against Maliki seeking a new term as long as he agreed to free Sadrist prisoners.
Sadr had previously opposed Maliki’s quest to stay on as premier after a general election which he lost more than two months ago, and several public statements delivered by his aides have been highly critical of the incumbent.
The conciliatory statement on Saturday, which followed discussions between the two sides over the previous 48 hours, was a big boost to Maliki’s chances and effectively removed the biggest hurdle to him remaining prime minister.
“If [Maliki] will give us sufficient guarantees to end our reluctance, especially concerning the arrests of Sadrists, then we will not block his candidacy for a second term,” Sadr spokesman Saleh al-Obeidi said from Najaf in southern Iraq.
He cautioned, however, that Maliki had “not yet succeeded” in meeting the group’s demand that around 2,000 of its followers, who were detained on the prime minister’s orders, be released.
The Sadrist movement is part of a recently formed Shiite coalition that includes Maliki’s State of Law Alliance, but the cleric’s political bloc has long despised Maliki, who authorized an assault on its armed wing — the Mehdi Army — in 2008.
Sadr, in an interview with al-Jazeera TV after the election, said he had “tried not to have a veto against anyone, but the masses had a veto against Maliki.”
The new Sadrist stance was welcomed by Maliki supporters.
“It paved the way to agreement with other blocs to solve the problem of forming a government,” Maliki adviser Ali Mussawi said.
Meanwhile, Allawi said if recent violence that has swept through Iraq were to continue then civil war loomed.
“After the elections we have seen a new wave of sectarianism which is very dangerous and we have indications that we are heading towards a new peak,” Allawi told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.
“We are just at the beginning, but if the violence continues we are heading towards civil war,” Allawi said.
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