Final results in Iraq's parliamentary election may not be known for two weeks, but early indications show the Shiite tickets doing well in traditional Shiite strongholds, election officials said Friday.
In Mosul, capital of the predominantly Sunni Arab province of Nineveh, indications were that the Sunni coalition came in first, said a representative for the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, Hameed Shabaky.
He said the Shiite governing party apparently came in fourth behind the Sunni coalition, the Kurds and a bloc led by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite.
Turnout in what was a mostly peaceful election was overwhelming. Election officials estimated up to 11 million of the nation's 15 million registered voters took part in Thursday's vote, which would put overall turnout at more than 70 percent.
In the Shiite province of Najaf province, as many as 80 percent of the voters cast ballots for the four-year parliament.
So many Sunni Arabs voted Thursday that ballots ran out in some places. The strong participation by Sunnis, the backbone of the insurgency, bolstered U.S. hopes that the election could produce a broad-based government capable of ending the daily suicide attacks and other violence that have ravaged the country since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
No comments:
Post a Comment