Elections in Iraq
The curent timetable for setting up a sovereign Iraqi government envisages such a government in place by June/July 2004. That means that it will come smack dab in the middle of the US presidential campaign, just before the Democrat National Convention at the end of July.
It’s hard to overstate the domestic political importance of this. Since the economy is now all but off the table, barring another domestic terrorist attack, Iraq will be the dominant issue in the US presidential campaign and it’s important that the Iraqi sovereign government be “moderate,” pluralistic and representative.
To ensure this outcome, the current plan leaves the selection of the government in the hands of representatives selected in caucuses. Iraq’s most prominent cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Muhammad Sistani, has called for direct elections instead of caucuses. Despite worries about a Shiite extremist majority being elected, this may actually be a good idea. Amir Taheri explains why:
Some claim that Sistani is so keen on elections because the Shi’ites, being a majority, could win a dominant position in a future government.That claim is based on an “essentialist” view of politics that is seldom borne out by reality. If it were, all American Catholics would vote the same way in every election, and all Hindus in India would back the same party all the time.
Sistani is calling for elections precisely because he does not want the politics of new Iraq to be based on ethnic and sectarian divisions. Such considerations are paramount in forming selected, not elected, bodies. (For example, the Governing Council, appointed by the Coalition, has a Shi’ite majority.)
If there were elections in Iraq today, we would see the Shi’ite vote split among at least three broad groups: moderate Islamists, the left and the liberals (liberals in the European, not the American, sense).
Each of these has allies in other parts of Iraq, including the Kurdish areas. Thus any future parliament, rather than reflecting sectarian divisions, would reveal the relative strength of the various political movements that have marked Iraqi life for the past eight decades.
Iraqi Kurds, divided into two big blocs and several smaller ones, do not all vote the same way. Nor could anyone claim that Iraq’s Sunni Arabs constitute a single bloc. So why assume that the Shi’ites are an exception?
By asking for elections, Sistani is, in fact, pulling the carpet from under the feet of those who wish to play sectarian politics.
That’s a good point. In every part of the world, ethnic/racial/religious minorities vote monolithically, while ethnic/racial/religious majorities split their votes. Sunnis constitute about 20 percent of the Iraqi population. The Kurds constitute another 20 percent. When you look at those numbers, it’s apparent that the only ideas that will win in Iraq are ideas backed by cross-sectarian majorities, i.e. “moderate” ideas. Fears of an extremist government may be overstated. The coalition should, of course, do scientific polling of Iraqis to verify that this is the case before allowing direct elections.
And think of the spectacle! All the world’s TV cameras would cover Iraqis voting in the first free elections in the Arab world. Neighboring Iranians would hanker for some real democracy of their own. The new Iraqi government would have legitimacy, having been elected by the people, and the “resistance’s” claims would ring increasingly hollow. President Bush could refer, in his Republican National Convention speech, to the first free elections in Arab history. He could make a very direct link between liberating Iraq and winning the War on Terror by bringing freedom and democracy to the middle-east.
If elections could be held successfully in Iraq by the middle of next year, it would mean a complete rout of defeatists, anti-Americans and Democrats. This is one instance where good policy and good politics intersect admirably.
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