| The final votes must still be counted in Iraq, but the trend is already clear. The biggest winners appear to be the Shiite religious parties whose politicians have run the ministries and whose militias have run the streets of southeastern Iraq for a year or more. The Kurdish separatist parties that supported this arrangement in exchange for absolute control of the Kurdish northeast also appear to have fared well. Sunni Arabs did a lot better than they did last January, when most boycotted the polls. But political fragmentation left them with fewer seats than they expected. In a further blow, a court ruled last week that at least 90 candidates, most of them Sunni, could not serve if elected because of their Baath Party ties. Still, the biggest losers were secular parties and those who tried to appeal to all of Iraq's communities, not just one religion or ethnic group. |
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