Election See-saw

Well, that didn't take long. As I stated in the post below, legitimacy would be the first problem to arise.

The Catch-22 of the Sunni question of legitimacy would be:

Iraq’s leading Sunni Muslim clerics said Wednesday the landmark elections lack legitimacy because large numbers of Sunnis did not participate in the balloting — which the clerics had asked them to boycott.

That is precious.

On the other side of the election playground, "Shiite Alliance Claims Victory." Supposedly, there are no concrete election results yet, so a statement in that vein seems a little premature. It seems the alliance, headed by al-Sistani, is trying to smooth the road in front of it by assuring the other groups (secular shiites, sunnis, christian kurds) that it wouldn't use it's electoral power to force the future government towards a theocracy. But, if the Shiite majority wants just that, will they be able to resist their demand?