Preliminary results in Iraq's parliamentary election signal a tight race that is unlikely to give any political alliance a majority.
With prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's bloc and the rival Iraqi National Alliance splitting most ballots cast by Shiites, the country's largest group, the chance of one party or coalition winning more than half of the 325 seats is slim.
The independent high electoral commission said today that al-Maliki's bloc is ahead in the southern province of Muthanna and the Iraqi National Alliance is leading in the southeastern province of Maysan.
The panel gave results yesterday for five of Iraq's 18 provinces. "The vote won't produce a decisive winner and there will have to be bargaining for a ruling coalition," Marina Ottaway, an analyst at Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said.
The Iraqi National Alliance has said it wants al-Maliki ousted as prime minister. Mr Al-Maliki's Shiite Muslim-dominated State of Law coalition was ahead in Najaf and Babil, two southern Shiite provinces, the electoral commission said yesterday. Allawi's Iraqiya, which appealed to minority Sunni Muslims, was on top in largely Sunni Diyala and Salahdin.
The Kurdistan Alliance was ahead in the Kurdish province of Erbil. Results from Baghdad, the capital and biggest city, have yet to be announced. Further results will be released tomorrow, the electoral commission said.
It may take months of negotiations to form a coalition government, analysts said. The government that emerges must resolve disputes over sharing oil revenue among regions and whether to include the oil-rich city of Kirkuk in the Kurdish autonomous region, as well as cope with hostilities between Shiites and Sunnis.
Fraud allegations may increase the risk of post-election violence. Complaints of fraud complicate the outcome. Even before results were released yesterday, Allawi's alliance expressed doubts about the count. "There are lots of violations," Iraqiya member Adnan Janabi told al-Jazeera, the Arabic-language television channel, today.
Ahmed Chalabi, a member of the Iraqi National Alliance, demanded that the electoral commission display original ballots and tally sheets along with announced results. Today, interior minister Jawad al-Boulani, who is running with the Sunni-dominated Iraqi Unity Coalition, told Beirut- based Sumaria TV that ballot boxes "were being transferred in suspicious circumstances."
A spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, Said Arikat, had dismissed the fraud charges as unrepresentative. "Politicians can say what they want. We have no reports of problems," he said by telephone from Baghdad.
Bloomberg