Kurds have 80% turnout for elections

Washington Post:

The ruling parties of Iraq's Kurdish autonomous region won a comfortable majority in the region's parliament, unofficial results showed Sunday, but a strong performance by the opposition has already begun to rework the balance of power.

In an election Saturday that drew surprisingly high turnout -- nearly 80 percent -- voters chose a president and a 111-member parliament for the Kurdish region in northern Iraq, a land of stunning geography that enjoys a large degree of independence from Baghdad and has emerged as a success story in an otherwise turbulent country.

The ruling parties -- Kurdish President Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, led by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani -- ran a joint slate of candidates for parliament. Given their dominance here, with near-total sway over everything from patronage to policies with Baghdad, they were expected to win handily. But dissidents from Talabani's party staged a spirited campaign and appeared to do unexpectedly well, particularly in Sulaymaniyah province, long considered Talabani's stronghold.

Officials with the ruling parties said unofficial results showed their list with 62 to 65 percent of the vote. The opposition's list, known as Change, took 23 to 24 percent, they said, and other parties won the rest. Other reports carried by Iraqi television stations put Change's number a few percentage points higher. Preliminary results were not expected to be released in Baghdad until Monday or Tuesday.

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Who would have thought that democracy would be so popular in Iraq? Certainly not the liberals who opposed the liberation of Iraq and the defeat of al Qaeda. Not Obama who found genocide an acceptable alternative to the surge that defeat al Qaeda.

It is a shame that the Post could find no room in the story to give credit to President Bush for making this possible. I guess it will be up to bloggers and future historians to correct the record.