With Eye on Incoming Poll Results, Iraqi Parties Mull Future Roles

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - As results from Wednesday’s Iraqi parliamentary elections and Kurdish provincial councils trickle in, leaders of Arab and Kurdish parties are busy speculating about their future plans.

Osama Nujaifi, who heads the Sunni Mutahidun list, said today that his group will not form an alliance with current Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

“In the past 10 years Iraq has passed through a long era of rivalries, and now the time has come to enter an era of stability, building the state in a healthy manner with reliance on the constitution and law,” Nujaifi told Rudaw.

In response to speculations that Iraq’s Sunnis might be seeking the presidency, Nujaifi said that the subject will not be discussed until after the full election results have come out.

Since 2005, Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, has been Iraq’s president. However, he has been away from the country since 2012, recovering from a stroke in Germany.

The new parliament is expected to elect a new president and prime minister.

Nujaifi and other Sunni leaders have had serious disagreements with Maliki over the past few years, often boycotting parliamentary sessions, resigning from his government and accusing him of violating the constitution.

“Our future alliance with any other bloc would depend on their work to bring stability to all of Iraq, be acceptable to all Iraqis and abide by the constitution that has been violated for a long time,” Nujaifi said.

For his part, Ali Adib, head of Maliki’s State of Law list, said it was too soon to speak of the nature of the new government. He said that, meanwhile, it was the goal of his list to win the most votes. “We will save Iraq from the bits and pieces of the many groups,” he promised.

Maliki and members of his list made the worsening security situation the main selling point of their campaign, often pointing to Sunni insurgent groups who they blame for much of the violence.

“The goal of the terrorists is to ruin the security situation and have Iraqis not participate in the political process,” said Adib. “But people’s participation in the elections was their way of confronting the violence.”

Without naming names, Adib called other political groups incompetent. “They are not able to take on responsibility,” he said.

Defying “terrorists and conspirators” in an official statement, Maliki said that he would work “to build a democratic and prosperous Iraq.”

Kurds in the autonomous Kurdistan region are also awaiting the outcome of the elections. Unlike people in the rest of Iraq, the Kurds cast two ballots on Wednesday, one for the Iraqi parliament and once for local councils.

So far, early results show that the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) is leading in Erbil and Duhok -- in some polling stations securing almost all the votes.

In Sulaimani, meanwhile, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Change Movement (Gorran) are both confident of winning the governorship.

However, it is believed that the PUK votes have increased in Sulaimani, allowing the party to push aside its nemesis, Gorran.

In the multiethnic city of Kirkuk, PUK supporters were already on the streets shortly after the polls closed, celebrating what they believed would be their win.