Apparently, it's no longer in effect.
Sunni and secular political parties angrily claimed Tuesday that last week's Iraqi national election was rigged, demanding a new vote and threatening to leave in shambles the delicate plan to bring Iraq's wary factions together in a new government.
Faced with preliminary vote counts that suggest a strong victory by the United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of Shiite religious parties that dominates the outgoing government, political leaders of Iraq's Sunni Arab minority hinted that insurgent violence would be accelerated by the suspicions of fraud.
Juan Cole has some pretty specific thoughts on how the apportionment of seats in the next Iraqi government is likely to play out - again, you'll note that the fundamentalist Shi'ite slate is the one that comes up smiling.
These results suggest a very strong position for the United Iraqi Alliance. There were [59]* seats at issue in Baghdad province, the largest single lot. If the UIA got 35-40 of them, that is a huge victory. Add those 35 to the likely 70 or so the UIA got in the solidly Shiite provinces, and you have 105. Another 8 in Babil and it is 113. A similar number in Diyala and you'd have 121. Then they may get some of the reserved seats when the reapportionment is done. They will be very close to having the 138 it needs to form a government. They can certainly pick up a few small allies and do it, perhaps without needing either the Sunnis or the Kurds (though they will need an initial coalition to gain the 2/3s needed to elect a president to appoint the prime minister).
I'm afraid that this could come very close to being the worst case scenario for Iraqi stability; I've been worried about Sunni engagement in the government, but if the Shi'ite extremists also marginalize the Kurds, we might see the peshmurga pull up its stakes and start some on-the-ground support for an effectively autonomous (rather than mostly autonomous) Kurdistan in the north, and that could mean a mess somewhere between an irrevocable Iraqi civil war and an all-out regional meltdown - the Turks and Iranians really don't want a functioning Kurdistan in the neighborhood.
It really was nice to feel optimistic for a day or so, though.
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