Thursday, 17 February 2005The Shia United Iraqi Alliance party has won a majority of seats in Iraq's new transitional parliament.
The party, which won the 30 January election with 48% of the vote, was allocated 140 seats.
The Kurdish parties, which came second in the poll, have 75 seats and interim PM Iyad Allawi's party gets 40 seats.
The new National Assembly will now choose a president and two vice-presidents, who will then decide on a prime minister and cabinet.
Iraq's electoral commission announced the results of the election on 13 February.
They have spent the last few days considering complaints arising from the announcement.
The allocation of the 275 seats was made after the votes of the 99 parties that did not make it into the parliament were taken away.
Coalition deal
The first job of the new parliament is to appoint a presidential council.
They will in turn appoint a prime minister - which will have the most important position in the new government - and a cabinet.
The alliance party is likely to have to make a coalition deal with the Kurds.
Alliance party members met this week to agree on their candidate for prime minister.
The current interim Vice-President, Ibrahim Jaafari, has emerged as the favourite but is yet to be confirmed. |
Thursday, 17 February 2005
BBC News
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