The intense and protracted process of drafting an Iraqi constitution has not merely displayed the country’s divisions but exacerbated them. Now that the draft has been presented, without a vote, to the Iraqi parliament it must receive the verdict of the people in a referendum on 15 October. There is no guarantee that the people will approve it.
The plain fact is that the current draft was the work of the two groups which have benefited most from America’s intervention in Iraq in 2003 – the Kurds and the Shi’ite religious parties. These two groups may have their differences (over Kurdish claims on the oil-rich region of Kirkuk, and over the role of Islam in Iraqi life) but they produced a draft which essentially protected their own respective interests. The Sunni Arabs were brought late into the negotiating process and, not surprisingly, felt they were being marginalised and their interests were being neglected. It is true that there were difficulties in finding genuinely representative Sunnis to take part in the drafting process. Nevertheless in rejecting the final draft, the Sunni negotiators appear to have reflected the feelings of their aggrieved community
The Sunni Arabs are now uniting in support of a “no” vote in the October referendum. If they can secure a two-thirds majority in three of the country’s 18 provinces, then the draft constitution will be rejected. Despite some uncertainties (including the question of whether violence will deter voting in Sunni areas) it is possible that they will succeed. Fresh elections would then have to be held in December, and a new parliament would have to start the process of drafting a constitution. It would be back to square one.
In some ways, this would not be an entirely disastrous outcome. The seven-month process that began with the elections on 30 January 2005 – and led with painful slowness to the presentation of the draft constitution before parliament on 28 August – has been seriously flawed. The Sunnis must take their share of responsibility for this, since they boycotted the January elections. But the result was that the political process was dominated by the Shia and the Kurds and so lacked legitimacy. Popular confidence was not enhanced by the fact that it took a further three months to form a government. Moreover many Iraqis have come to see the leader of that government, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a moderate Shi’ite Islamist, as well-intentioned but weak and ineffectual.
Using fresh elections to set in motion a new and more credible political process would thus have obvious benefits. The mood within the Sunni community has changed significantly. The feeling now is that the January boycott was a mistake which must now be corrected. It is therefore likely that the Sunnis would do their utmost to participate in fresh elections, in the hope of producing a better-balanced parliament and government.
But the delay and embarrassment of going back to square one would be highly unwelcome to the Jaafari government and to the Bush administration in Washington. It would signal that Mr Jaafari and his colleagues had failed -- and it would jeopardise President Bush’s plan to withdraw a significant number of US troops some time next year.
For both of them to press ahead in the hope that the referendum would produce a “yes” vote might, however, be unwise. An overwhelming yes vote would of course give renewed credibility to the political process. But that seems unlikely. And to proceed with the current constitution, if it were approved by only a narrow majority, would risk fuelling Sunni grievance and making it even harder to bring an end to the Sunni-led insurgency.
Like it not, Iraq’s political (as well as economic) reconstruction is proving far more difficult and time-consuming than the authors of the American intervention had supposed.
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