Iraqis were still awaiting preliminary results Thursday four days after a national election they hoped would bring stable government and help end years of sectarian conflict as US troops ready to leave. Elections officials had expected to release the first results Wednesday, but by early afternoon Thursday no official vote counts had been made public. “God willing, today at 6 P.M. we will announce the results of some provinces and some (voting) centers in detail,” said Qasim Al-Aboudi, a member of Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission. The results were anxiously awaited by foreign oil companies making plans to invest billions of dollars and vault Iraq into the top echelon of global producers, and by Washington policy-makers as the United States prepares to leave Iraq by end-2011. Shiite Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki's electoral coalition, State of Law, appeared to have at least a slight lead in informal vote tallies from Baghdad and the mainly Shiite south. A secular, cross-sectarian list headed by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi was doing well in Sunni areas north and west. Iraqi election officials had said they would make initial results public when 30 percent of the vote had been counted. A clear victory by any of the blocs is unlikely and negotiations to form a coalition government could take months, leaving the possibility of a dangerous political vacuum with US troops readying to formally end combat operations by the end of August and leave the country before 2012. Sixty-two percent of Iraq's nearly 19 million voters turned out at the polls on Sunday despite death threats from the Al- Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and a spate of election-day attacks by Sunni militants that killed 39 people. Maliki's State of Law coalition, an alliance of his Dawa party and some Sunni tribal leaders, Shiite Kurds, Christians and independents, led in Baghdad, the biggest electoral prize with about 8 million people, according to informal tallies. State of Law was the big winner in January 2009 provincial elections and campaigned on a platform of improved security and strong central government. Even if Maliki allies make up the biggest bloc in Iraq's next parliament they will have to unite with one or two other coalitions to form a government, and Maliki may face challenges from coalition partners opposed to giving him a second term.
