Middle East Focus: al-Maliki Plays Rough in Vain, My Allawi Fatwa Now Covers Him…………

Arabia Deserta

al-Maliki Plays Rough in Vain, My Allawi Fatwa Now Covers Him…………

"All four candidates ran in Diyala province, a restive mainly Sunni area north of Baghdad. One candidate who won more than 28,000 votes is being held incommunicado in a Baghdad jail, two other winners are on the run and the whereabouts of the fourth, a woman, are unknown……. Maliki's critics say the Shiite prime minister is using state security forces and the courts to remove political rivals - especially prominent Sunnis - in a last-ditch effort to disqualify candidates from Allawi's Iraqiya coalition, which holds only a two-seat lead ahead of Maliki's State of Law bloc. The government's action, coupled with appeals by Maliki's bloc for the votes to be thrown out in these cases, appeared to be a long shot maneuver to strip Allawi of his margin of victory. In the end, Iraq's high court will have to settle this and other disputes and certify the final results, a process that could take another two weeks……..”

Even if these people are disqualified, al-Maiki will not be the next prime minister of Iraq. Neither will Allawi of course. I now add Nouri al-Maliki to my Allawi fatwa, amending it so that neither one of these men will be prime minister. Neither Allawi’s barely-disguised Ba’athists nor the desperate al-Maliki will win in the end.
Cheers
mhg

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