Holy Shi'ite! Looks like they won

Looks as if Shi'ite cleric Ayatollah Sistani is claiming victory for an election that isn't even over yet. Crazy Shi'ites, it should be interesting to see what the Kurds think about this. According to the article they placed a close second in the exit polls.

The official results aren't in yet, nor are any preliminary returns, but that isn't stopping the United Iraqi Alliance backed by fundamentalist Shi'ite cleric Ayatollah Sistani from claiming victory -- and an overwhelming one at that:

"Officials in the United Iraqi Alliance believe their bloc of mainly Shi'ite parties has won almost half of the 275 assembly seats, based on their own exit polls and 13,000 monitors.

"Iraqis may have to wait days for the Electoral Commission to declare the results, but if those projections are correct, the Alliance could link with smaller parties to build a two-thirds majority in parliament, enough to choose Iraq's new leaders.

"Party exit polls suggest voters ignored most of the 111 choices on their bulky and bewildering ballot papers and plumped for one of three main blocs in contention for power.

"A Kurdish grouping is expected to come second behind the United Iraqi Alliance, with a secular bloc led by Shi'ite interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi likely to take third place."
www.antiwar.com...

[edit on 2/1/2005 by Simulacra]

If Sistani believes his party won, I hope the election results prove him right.
I think it could get very messy if someone like Allwai is announced as the winner, as Sistani and his followers may make accusations of fraud.

Just makes sense since the Shiites are a majority. Looks like Iran won. Oops, I meant the Shiite.

no one 'wins' this election tho, they just get put inot the National Assembly. It'd be extremely unlikey for al-Sistani to not be in that Assembly. I doubt that the Kurds will be surprised, or the Sunnis. Their representatives will also be there too.

And we all know how precise exit polls are now dont we?

Well, actually, they have been proven very acurate, just not in the last US election.

LAst I heard the absentee ballots from Detriot were not fully counted, and the NAACP is asking about the black vote.....

Originally posted by esdad71
LAst I heard the absentee ballots from Detriot were not fully counted, and the NAACP is asking about the black vote.....

Plus Jesse Jackson, Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter are now on their way to Iraq to dispute the election results ....

Originally posted by Nygdan
no one 'wins' this election tho, they just get put inot the National Assembly. It'd be extremely unlikey for al-Sistani to not be in that Assembly. I doubt that the Kurds will be surprised, or the Sunnis. Their representatives will also be there too.

Most of the Kurds are Sunnis.

When you consider that around 95ish percent of Iraqis are Muslims, 65ish percent of the Muslims are Shia and the rest Sunni. It isn't hard to guess which branch of the Muslim religion is going to end up ruling.

Originally posted by Kriz_4
It isn't hard to guess which branch of the Muslim religion is going to end up ruling.

Why hasn't that logic applied so far?

The shia are apparently the poorer of the two, at least in iraq. I think that they are the underclass throughout most of the muslim world, outside of Iran. Not too sure about that tho.

The al Sistani-backed list was always expected to get the most seats. Al Sistani himself is not on the list though. They have promised to work with the Arab Sunnis and the Kurds and make a secular government not a theocracy.