Over half a month has passed since the Iraqi parliament election, except that result of the election was announced on February 13 by the Independence Electoral Committee, the current situation regarding formation of the Iraqi transition government remains unclear.

According to proportional representation, the alliance of various Iraqi parties is already able to count out the seats they gained in the transitional National Assembly by the votes they obtained. Once the votes-counting result is confirmed, the "Iraqi United Alliance", composed mainly of Shiite Muslim leaders, which is the No.1 winner of the election, with its 48 percent rate of votes obtained, will garner at least 132 seats out of the Parliament's 275 seats, the Kurdish party alliance and the political alliance led by Iyad Allawi, prime minister of the provisional government, will gain 71 seats and 38 seats respectively.

Under the circumstance wherein the distribution of seats has approximately been fixed, the final ownerships of the posts of the president and the prime minister in the Iraqi transitional government have become the focus of attention of various parties. According to the stipulations of Iraq's interim constitution and the arrangement for the process of political reconstruction, the election of a transitional National Assembly is only part of this year's series of elections. The transitional National Assembly, which is soon to be "born", will elect a presidential committee composed of one president and two vice-presidents to take charge of selecting the prime minister of the transitional government. The nominated prime minister should hand in a name list of the cabinet ministers, the name list of prime minister and cabinet ministers must be passed by parliament ballot.

According to the interim constitution, the Iraqi president is the national symbol, which is considerably tinted with an "etiquette" color, the real power is held in the hands of the prime minister. For this reason, the election of a candidate for the prime minister will be the main point for near-term political negotiations and consultations among various Iraqi parties. The "Iraqi United Alliance" which won the highest rate of votes in the election on February 15 agreed to choose the current Vice-President Ibrahim al-Jafari as the candidate for the prime minister of the transitional government. The main competitor of 58-year-old Ibrahim al-Jafari within the "Iraqi United Alliance" is Chalabi, party chief of the Iraqi National Assembly.

According to the interim constitution, the candidate for the prime minister must be unanimously approved by the presidential committee and must win a simple majority of parliament votes of confidence before he can be elected. Since the "Iraqi United Alliance" has possessed at least 132 seats, therefore, on the premise that the Alliance is not split internally, it can be sure to garner the post of prime minister by only winning another six votes of confidence.

If the various factions suffer setback in the process of political consultations, which thus leads to the "difficult coming" of candidates for the prime minister and other cabinet members, then according to the series of electoral rules, the outcome of formation of a new government will be seen only till the end of March this year.

The votes-counting result of the general election shows that the top three provinces which earned the highest voting rate in Iraqi general election all come from the Kurdish areas, the Kurds obtained 25 percent votes in the election of the National Assembly, this ratio even surpasses the proportion of Kurds in Iraq's total population. Thanks to the Kurdish voters' enthusiasm and high voting rates in the general election, JalalTalabani, chairman of the Kurdish Patriotic Alliance, has become the highly favored presidential candidate.

Judged from the votes-counting result of the election announced on February 13, the voting rates in areas inhabited in compact communities by Iraq's Sunnis Arabs are relatively low, about only 29 percent, of which the voting rate in Anbar Province is only 2 percent. Public opinion held that Sunnis Arabs were marginalized in the general election. But the Sunnites could not be excluded completely outside the entire political process, because in the referendum over a permanent constitution, if only any three provinces of Iraq's 18 provinces veto the constitution, the constitution will not be adopted and thus give rise to a constitutional crisis. In that case, how to draw the Sunnites into active participation in Iraq's political process is a question needing urgent solution by people in the Iraqi political circles.

By People's Daily Online