Official electoral coalitions list released

The deadline for registering coalitions for the 2010 parliamentary elections expired in mid-November. But even though all the parties had submitted their lists by then, the Iraqi elections commission, the IHEC, kept postponing the publication of the lists pending the final passage of the election law. However, now the official list has been released.

The list contains relatively few surprises. There are only 14 coalitions, of which not more than around 6 seem truly competitive: Kurdistan, Tawafuq, the Iraqi National Alliance, State of Law, Unity of Iraq and Iraqiyya. For these, in turn, the line-up is more or less as expected, even though a few entities remained in doubt about their loyalties until the very end. Eventually, it was Maliki (and not Unity of Iraq) who got the amir of the powerful Rabia tribe of the Tigris on his side; the Iraqi National Alliance, for its part, has managed to enlist the support of the Shaykhi community of Basra.