Secularist Iyad Allawi edged ahead of Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki on Saturday in a neck-and-neck election race that has laid bare the ethnic and sectarian divisions threatening Iraq's fragile stability. The new results from Iraq's electoral commission, with about 93 percent of an early vote count complete, gave a lead of some 8,000 votes to Allawi, a Shiite former prime minister with wide support among minority Sunnis who fear consolidation of the dominance of Shiite religious parties in Iraq since 2003. The lead in the popular vote has changed hands several times and the eventual winner may be able to claim a symbolic victory, but no matter the final result both Maliki and Allawi's will need to engage in long and potentially divisive talks to try to form a coalition capable of forming a government. A close election may actually exacerbate those threats by making it harder to form a government coalition. Compared to the 543,747 votes Maliki himself got, and 354,097 for Allawi, Interior Minister Jawad Bolani got just 2,992 votes. Defense Minister Abdel Qader Jassim did even worse, with a personal tally of only 687 votes. Iraq's electoral commission has yet to announce results for voting abroad, which is expected to add support for Allawi, and the results of special voting that includes soldiers, police, prison inmates and the infirm.
