Iraqi Elections Reflect Increased Secularism, Analyst (Elections‪)‬

Early results of this month's general elections in Iraq show that more Iraqis support secular parties compared to when the first post-Saddam Hussein legislative polls were held in 2005, an Iraqi analyst wrote in the London-based daily AL HAYAT on March 17. "The general atmosphere reflects that Iraqi voters are moving away from religious and sectarian parties. This is true among both main Muslim sects in Iraq," Hamid Kafaai wrote in the Saudi-owned newspaper, referring to Sunnis and Shiites. "The Sunni Islamic Party lost most of its leaders and members, who boldly moved to the other extreme, joining the Iraqiya coalition. It seems the last five years were enough to make them realize that the best way to serve Iraq with all its sects is to abide by secular slogans," he said. The Iraqiya, led by former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a moderate Shiite with moderate Sunnite allies, is a coalition of Iraqi political parties that ran in the December 2005 Iraqi elections and won eight percent of the vote and 25 out of parliament's 275 seats. In this month's polls, Allawi's list competed with incumbent Prime Minister Nurial-Maliki's State of Law Coalition. Early results show the race between the two lists put them neck and neck. On the Shiite side, the Iraqi National Alliance (INA), which is mainly composed of Shiite Islamist parties and won the most votes in the 2005 elections, "increased in size but seems to be moving to third place" in terms of the number of parliamentary seats it is expected to gain, Kafaai said in AL HAYAT. The alliance includes, most importantly, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, whose leader Abdel-Aziz Hakim is close to Iran. It also included the Islamic Dawa (Call) Party, which is headed by Maliki. "True, the alliance attracted minor secular figures that are looking for roles, but it remains Shiite at the core, and it is widely believed to have manipulated the law and the constitution to sideline its adversaries," Kafaai said.