Maliki wins Iraq majority to form new government, lawmaker says

By Khalid Al-Ansary and Nayla Razzouk, Bloomberg News Bloomberg
11:20 p.m. CDT, May 19, 2014



BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al- Maliki's Shiite Muslim coalition won a majority in national elections and will form the next government in OPEC's No. 2 oil producer, according to a lawmaker from the alliance.

The National Alliance, including Maliki's State of Law parliamentary bloc, won more than 170 of parliament's 328 seats in the April 30 balloting, lawmaker Khalid al-Asadi said in a telephone interview.

State of Law has chosen Maliki to remain as prime minister in the new government, he said. Final results are to be announced later Monday by the Independent High Electoral Commission.

"The National Alliance has definitely won a majority, more than 170 seats out of parliament's 328 seats, and that allows us to form the next government," al-Asadi said. "We have no intention to change or replace Nouri al-Maliki."

The military reinforced its presence across Baghdad ahead of the announcement, and state-sponsored Iraqiya television reported that motorcycles and carts were banned from the capital's streets as a precautionary measure.

Violence has surged in Iraq, and troops from Maliki's Shiite-dominated government are battling fighters from al-Qaida and allied Sunni Muslim forces in the west of the country.

Maliki, 63, is seeking a third term in office in the nation of 33 million people, which he has governed since 2006.

The new parliament will choose a president to replace Jalal Talabani, who has been receiving medical treatment in Germany since suffering a stroke in December 2012.

The sectarian violence his government curbed in 2008 has flared again, aggravated by the civil war in neighboring Syria. A total of 3,015 civilians were killed in the first three months of this year, according to the unofficial Iraq Body Count website, more than triple from a year earlier.

Political tussling has also deepened, as Maliki's relations with the Sunnis and the country's ethnic Kurds in the north have become more strained. A dispute with the central government prompted authorities in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region in the north to suspend oil exports through the national pipeline in December 2012.

Iraq, with the world's fifth-largest oil reserves, overtook Iran as the second-biggest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, helped by foreign investors including Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil. Oil wealth has buoyed the economy, which the International Monetary Fund forecasts to expand by 5.9 percent this year. The Maliki government plans a record $145.9 billion budget for 2014, up from $119 billion in 2013.


[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

I guess but I did remember reading and waiting for the 25th for official announcement.

His first order of business needs to be to raise the value of the dinar, but it probably won't be.

just because his coalition won majority votes doesnt mean maliki will be PM he must form other coalitions to get main goi ! which means he needs other groups and they are not keen on him ...he lost the main cleric confidence also!