17 February 2005
"We congratulate them for it," Carlos Valenzuela told a news conference after the Independent Electoral Commission for Iraq (IECI) announced the final stage of an electoral process in which the UN played an advisory and technical role.
The announcement came a day after the Security Council called for inclusiveness and transparency in the next stages of the war-torn country's transition, including the writing of a new constitution, after large numbers of Sunni Arabs, who form about 20 per cent of the population, stayed away from the 30 January poll and thus will be largely unrepresented in the just-elected transitional National Assembly.
The Council pledged full UN support for a federal, democratic, pluralist and unified Iraq as the new legislators face the challenges of writing the constitution and holding new elections for a permanent assembly and government by the end of the year.
How the new assembly stands


Final figures from Baghdad today showed that the Shia United Iraqi Alliance has won a slight majority in the new Iraqi National Assembly. The party took 140 out of the 275 seats in the Assembly. 

The major opposition party will be the ''Kurdish Alliance'', which took 75 seats. The third largest party will be that of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's party, which won 40 seats.   

Reports in U.S. media say that many Sunni voters stayed away from the polls either because of a fear of violence or to support the call by some radical clerics to boycott the elections. As a result, the Sunni-led Iraqis Party won only five seats in parliament. The results are summarized in the following table:




Seats 

Percentage 

 Party/Population Group



140 

51% 

 United Iraqi Alliance/Shiite 



40 

15% 

 Allawi's Party/Shiite



75 

27%  

 Kurdish Alliance/Kurdish



5 

2% 

 Iraqis Party/Sunni



15 

5% 

 Other



275 

100% 

 Total



Chief UN election adviser, Carlos Valenzuela, congratulated those involved with the election. He commented that "The elections were not perfect, they were never meant to be, but they were extremely successful."

There were fears before the election in international circles that a low turnout could jepordise the legitimacy of the new assembly. However, nearly 8.5 million Iraqis voted - 58% of the registered electorate.   As noted previously, the turnout percentage did vary significantly among the various population groups.  By combining the two different Shiite parties and comparing to estimated population groups in Iraq we find:




Percent ofParliament 

Estimated PopulationPercentage 

 Population Group



65% 

40%-50% 

 Shiite 



27% 

15%-20%  

 Kurdish



2% 

32%-37% 

 Sunni



5% 

3%-5% 

 Other



100% 

90%-112% 

 Total



The Shiite and Kurdish groups had more than 80% turnout whereas the Sunni group had a turnout under 4%.  The low turnout by Sunni voters resulted in much higher representative success for both the Shiite and Kurdish groups in the parliament.