With the Iraqi election results now official, Shiite and Sunni political parties are headed to the negotiating table. Both sides are seeking to forge a coalition government. No party won an outright majority in the Iraqi parliamentary elections, but the Shiites did win a plurality. Because neither the Kurds, the Shiites nor Sunnis won a majority, a coalition government is necessary.

Even before the election results were official, Sunnis protested the results as being fraudulent. Preliminary results had indicated that Sunni aligned parties only won between 19 and 20% of the vote. To the Sunnis, the main backers of Saddam Hussein and the subsequent insurgency, such results were clearly fraudulent because they did not receive an overwhelming majority. The fact of the matter is, however, Sunnis only make up 1/5th of Iraq’s population and thus the results were clearly not fraudulent, as election observers could further attest.

The massive protests, however, were calculated, signaling to Shia and Kurd that if the Sunnis did not receive a significant role in a future Iraqi government there would be ongoing hostilities with the Sunnis. The Shia apparently got the message, as they have bent over backwards to include the Sunnis in power sharing talks, when the Kurds and Shia alone could have forged a coalition to govern Iraq. One of the most volatile points of contention, aside from the murderous rampage of the insurgents is the matter of Iraq’s next Prime Minister. Presumably the Shia may agree to a Sunni leader if the Sunni will agree to stop killing any and everyone who crosses an Iraqi street.

The prospects for Iraqi democracy aren’t promising. The fact that the Sunnis were able to win concessions simply by protesting an obviously legitimate vote, does not foment great trust in representative government, but rather enshrines the mob mentality that the Sunnis have embraced wholeheartedly.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-01-25-iraq_x.htm