Surely the international prognosticators and triumphalists can't be wrong. Can they? This article illustrates some of the creative ways the professional opinion-manufacturing class fudged and massaged numbers that were purely speculative in the first place. The highly-touted Sunni turnout is apparently even lower than originally feared -- about 10% in Mosul, one of the major cities that need to be stabilized by the legitimacy of the democratic process.
Already the Sunni clerics have collectively refused to legitimize the elections, so naturally the Shiites now have an out on having to share power with their longtime oppressors. And by the rules of the constitutional referendum, a two-thirds "no" vote in just three provinces is enough to squash the whole constitution (and, by extension, the legitimacy of the new Iraqi state). Guess how many Sunni majority provinces there are?
This article gives a quick rundown of the vote count thus far. Sistani seems to have a considerable lead on Allawi. This is not terribly good news. For one, it shows that Allawi's government, which after all has had six months to show what it can do, is less favorable than a heretofore unproven quantity like Sistani. This does not speak well for Allawi, who is already getting complaints from Human Rights Watch regarding reports of torture resuming at Abu Ghraib under Iraqi security forces.
Secondly, while Sistani is being talked up as a "moderate", I don't quite buy it. I have a tough time believing that someone from an organization called Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) is "moderate" about much of anything. SCIRI has also been known to have Iranian funding and influence in the past.
Thirdly, there has been talk that Sistani would find a high-profile role -- such as interior minister or oil minister -- for that prick Chalabi. You may recall Chalabi as the guy who sat directly behind Laura Bush at the 2003 State Of The Union, but whom George W. Bush seemed curiously not to know when it turned out Chalabi not only had fed us bunk info about how easy it would be to roll Iraq, he also may have given US intelligence to an Iranian spy. Chalabi is a corrupt weasel, a distributor of thick envelopes and secret favors. There is no reason for him to be entrusted with a role in a crucial phase of this new government.
Assuming the whole thing hasn't collapsed into full-scale civil war by June.
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