Iraq has broken a new record for a parliamentary democracy: 213 days without a government. On Friday Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, who has clung tenaciously on to power, was all but assured a second term in office by securing the support of his former enemy – the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose followers once fought the Iraqi army for control of Baghdad and Basra. Several weeks of haggling lie ahead, but if the complexion of the future government remains as it is now, almost wholly Shia, with Kurdish support, the few political achievements of the last two years could start to unwind.

The electoral map of Iraq is split wholly on sectarian lines. The secular and largely Sunni coalition of Ayad Allawi won all the seats, bar one, in the three provinces of Nineveh, Anbar and Salahuddin. This was the cockpit of the insurgency and al-Qaida in Mesopotamia, and the participation of Sunni tribal chiefs in the election was seized upon as a sign that they had turned their back irrevocably on political violence. By contrast, Maliki and his main Shia rivals won in all the provinces of the south, with only a handful of seats going to Allawi. Squeezed between the Kurds in the north, who are demanding territorial concessions in return for their support of Maliki's coalition, and the Shias in the south, who are reluctant to send their money north, the disfranchised Sunnis must be asking themselves what their votes were worth. Just to ram home the point, Maliki sent troop reinforcements to Anbar over the weekend.

There are concerns, too, about the Sadrists. The last time they entered government they purged the three ministries they controlled – transport, agriculture and health – and used the resources of those ministries in the sectarian war. Which ministries will Moqtada al-Sadr get this time round, in return for his support? There is also the fact that the Sadrists are supported by Iran – an increase in Iranian influence in Iraq is the last thing the US wants.

The negotiations over the next government have been motivated by two opposing fears: that Maliki could become a dictator, or that Allawi could destroy the postwar settlement which gave Shias power, wealth and political dominance. Maliki appears to be prevailing and is currently impervious to US pressure to include Sunnis in his government, although the US is not an innocent party when it comes to playing sectarian politics in Iraq. Trading government posts for political support also has its problems, as it is one of the causes of Iraq's rampant corruption. But this is a question of the lesser of two evils. Nothing could be worse than for Maliki to believe his own propaganda, that only a strongman can keep the uneasy peace.