BAGHDAD — A special electoral court in Iraq disqualified a winning candidate in last month’s election on charges he once was a member of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, two officials said Monday. The decision was the first concrete move to change the preliminary results of the vote that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s coalition narrowly lost. The court’s ruling intensified a political crisis that remains far from resolved, raising tensions and even the specter of violence. The court’s decision, at a minimum, will delay the formation of a new government through the months when the Obama administration has pledged to withdraw its combat troops, leaving a force of only 50,000 after September.
The disqualified candidate won a seat in the new 325-member Parliament on a slate led by Ayad Allawi, a Shiite who served as interim prime minister after the American invasion in 2003, the officials said.
The court, however, also disqualified 51 losing candidates, and the votes they received will be discarded, requiring a recalculation of the winners — and losers — across the ballot, the officials said.
The director of the commission charged with purging former Baath loyalists also disclosed that he had asked the court to bar nine additional winning candidates, though the court has yet to rule on that. That would clearly change the outcome since all of the candidates belong to Mr. Allawi’s winning coalition, which had edged out Mr. Maliki’s bloc by two seats, 91 to 89.
“It’s an effort to defame the political process,” said Maysoon al-Damlouji, a spokeswoman for Mr. Allawi’s coalition, known as Iraqiya.
The machinations — denounced as illegal by Mr. Allawi’s supporters — appeared to strengthen Mr. Maliki’s efforts to return to office for a second term. His ability to win enough votes in Parliament to be re-elected prime minister, however, also appears increasingly in doubt, as other parties have intensified their criticism of his government, especially after a wave of bombings struck Shiite mosques and neighborhoods on Friday.
The prolonged fight over the election’s results now shows no sign of ending, stalling the formation of a new government that is widely considered a test of the country’s stability.
The electoral court’s ruling can be appealed, which would delay the process of seating the new Parliament for at least another month, and perhaps longer. Only a week ago, the same election panel ordered a partial recount of votes in the province that includes Baghdad. That was supposed to have begun already, but the country’s election commission said that it would be delayed at least another week as its commissioners sought clarification from the court about how exactly to conduct a recount.
The convoluted challenges to the results, the dearth of public information and the weakness of Iraq’s institutions of state have compounded confusion over the election’s outcome and the path to forming a government. Many officials reacted with surprise after the court’s decision, relying on information — and misinformation — as word of the decision spread, but the court, as usual, did not publicly release its ruling.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Hajim al-Hassani, a member of Mr. Maliki’s coalition, State of Law, said. “It’s going to the federal court. It’s up to these institutions to resolve these questions.”
