Ballots amid the bullets and bombs

Oct 14th 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

Iraqis are preparing to vote in a referendum on the country’s proposed new constitution. It is hoped that last-minute amendments, agreed this week by the parliament, will increase support for the document. But some Sunni Arab leaders are still calling for a boycott or a “no” vote

FOR almost a year, Iraqi television viewers have been assailed by advertisements urging them to vote in various referendums and elections. Amid swelling nationalist music, they are told to fulfil these civic duties in order to defeat terrorism and give their children a better future. So it was a bit of a shock for them to see a new series of advertisements with a very different sort of message for the referendum on a new constitution that is due to be held on Saturday October 15th. Some urged them to “resist the occupation” by rejecting a document that would split the country and sow sectarian strife. They also complain that most Iraqi households have not even received a copy of the draft constitution. How, asks one ad, can voters opine on something they haven't even read?

By Friday, the streets of Iraqi cities and towns were almost empty and many shops closed, as stringent security measures came into force to prevent insurgents from disrupting the vote. Iraq's borders have been sealed off and all private vehicles will be banned from the roads from Friday night until Sunday morning.

The mood in many parts of Iraq is far less enthusiastic than it was in the run-up to the general election in January, when 58% of eligible Iraqis are reckoned to have voted, even though most Sunni Arabs, some 20% of the population, stayed away in protest or out of fear. Since then, months of car-bombings have shown that politics alone is no panacea. And more people feel they are being treated as a rubber stamp for the big parties in parliament, with little effort to involve them in the drafting of the constitution. The government’s failure to distribute the document to many districts of Baghdad, let alone the centre and west of the country, where the insurgency is fiercest, has further soured them.

This is in part because of frantic last-minute negotiations to tweak the document, mainly to make it more acceptable to aggrieved Sunnis who are concentrated in these regions. They feel they are being done down by a compact between the majority Shia Arabs (about 60% of the population, especially concentrated in the south of the country) and the Kurds (around 20%, based mainly in the north).

The accord between the Kurds and Shia Arabs gives the former extreme autonomy, while pleasing the latter by giving the document not only an Islamist tint but also letting them (and Sunni Arabs) form their own decentralised regions, further dividing Iraq to the detriment, Sunnis believe, of themselves. In particular, Sunnis worry that the Shias could form a “super-region” of up to nine provinces, with links to neighbouring Iran, presaging Iraq’s eventual break-up into three countries. Furthermore, the article in the draft constitution dealing with the allocation of oil revenue has worrying ambiguities that could be abused by the Shias and Kurds, who sit on most of the country’s oil fields.

However adjusted, there remains a lot in the document to annoy all-comers. Many Shias, not just Sunnis, suspect federalism of being an American-Kurdish plot to break up Iraq. Most of the main Shia parties now endorse the draft, as does the most influential Shia religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, though a radical preacher, Muqtada al-Sadr, has offered no clear guidance. Many Kurds, though sure to vote yes, are cross that the document includes no right to secede.

Nevertheless, one last-minute change may ensure the constitution’s approval and perhaps even win it some of the popular legitimacy it has so far lacked. Just four days before the vote, it was agreed that the next parliament, to be elected in December, will create a commission to review the constitution and propose amendments, to be confirmed in yet another referendum six months later. The latest deal also offers a further clutch of mostly symbolic sweeteners for the Sunnis, stressing Iraq’s unity and Arab character.

The largest Sunni party, the Iraqi Islamic Party, now backs the document, and on Thursday it was joined by another prominent group, the Sunni Endowment, which said that despite some lingering misgivings, “living under a flawed law is better than chaos and anarchy.” Some other influential Sunni outfits, such as the Muslim Scholars’ Board, still call for a “no” vote or a boycott. Since Sunnis are now divided between yes, no and boycott camps, the rejectionists seem less likely to muster the necessary two-thirds majority in at least three provinces to stymie the new constitution.

Whatever the outcome of the referendum, Sunni representation in the next parliament will rise, due to improvements in the voting system to make representation more proportional and because more Sunni groups are expected to take part in December’s general election than did so in January’s. As the war drags on, more may turn against the suicide-bombers and others at the extreme end of the insurgency. That, at any rate, is the hope of Iraq’s Shia and Kurdish majority—and of many ambivalent, fearful Sunnis.

If the constitution, for all its flaws, is approved by voters, it will pave the way to a new form of governance that will be the most federal and decentralised in the Middle East, establish a fair set of rights and values, and, with luck, provide for a better life for all Iraqis. However, if it is rejected, the December parliamentary elections will have to be followed by a fresh round of constitution-drafting. Even in this pessimistic case, the increased Sunni representation in the new parliament should improve the chances that the second stab at a constitution will be more widely acceptable.

More reassurances needed

Again assuming the constitution is approved in Saturday’s vote, there is plenty that the current and next parliaments can do to reassure Sunnis and undercut support for the insurgency. Guarantees could be offered to former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party who have no blood on their hands that they have nothing to fear. A ruling could be made that no region may comprise more than four provinces. The constitutional articles regarding oil revenues could be clarified and amended to ensure that Sunni-inhabited areas which lack oil reserves are not done down.

Whatever the outcome of this weekend’s constitutional vote, it is vital for Iraq’s emerging new order to divide the insurgents and reach out to the Sunni nationalists whose followers are increasingly alienated by the mass suicide-bombings and beheadings perpetrated by the jihadists. If things go well, the political momentum that has fizzled since January’s elections may be recovered. But Iraqis still need to try harder to clasp hands across sectarian barriers.

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