Iraqi Election Results Out

Ayatollah Sistani’s favored party did not get a majority, which is good news. It means everyone will need to sit down and hammer out a compromise, and that everyone of electoral significance will (at least initially) bind itself to living with it. Prime Minister Allawi’s Iraqi list is in talks with President Ghazi Al-Yawar’s moderate Sunnis and with the Communist Party, trying to form a large enough bloc of secular votes in the Parliament to check the power of clerical influence.