Iraq has gained a relatively stable foundation for drawing up a new Constitution after this week’s election results. The figures show that no group will be able to railroad its proposals through the drafting process. The watchwords will have to be dialogue and compromise.
The United Iraqi Alliance, the Shia list known as the candle, which has emerged as the largest block, is made up largely of religious groups. But because it has fallen short of 50%, the forthcoming debate over whether secular or religious values will dominate in the Constitution is wide open.
Even the definition of religious values is contested since the candle list also includes Christians. By the same token the debate on federalism is also open.
Kurds did better from the election than their population numbers warrant, mainly because the Sunnis are under-represented.
With 25% of the seats in the National Assembly, which will supervise the drafting of the Constitution, the Kurds are in a powerful position to get their way in putting the ”new Iraq” on a federal footing. This will protect their autonomy.
Any fears that the Shias would block the federal proposals are unrealistic now.
Many Shias from southern Iraq have as much of an interest in federalism as the Kurds, partly in order to have greater control in Basra over revenues from the southern Iraqi oilfields, which at the moment go to Baghdad.
The majority Shia view seems to be that the oil is a national resource, but if there was any sense that the northern oil fields were going to fall into Kurdish hands, they might wish to have the option of keeping exclusive control over the southern ones. A Constitution that decentralised power to the provinces would keep that possibility alive.
The fact that relatively few seats have gone to the Sunnis poses a problem, though it was widely predicted. It was caused mainly by the election boycott called for by the Iraqi Islamic party and the Association of Muslim Scholars.
Since civilians in their region have felt the brunt of the United States military operations since the dictatorship fell, they made the argument that elections under occupation were unfair, and that the Americans were refusing to give even the vaguest timetable for the occupation’s end.
This is what Washington calls a ”conditions-based” rather than a ”calendar-based” approach to the timing of withdrawal.
Shias and Kurds will have to work out a system by which Sunnis can be offered a reasonable stake in the Constitution-drafting process.
Even before the result announcement, Iraq’s leading politicians invited the Sunnis to take part. The Sunnis have not yet decided on their response.
The two main Sunni groupings are religious, but they appear to be less concerned about getting Islamic views on divorce, women’s property and other rights reflected in the Constitution than the Shia religious parties are. So they may not combine with the Shias in the drafting committees.
The first set of bargaining will centre on the choice of prime minister. The Americans have more than one candidate they could live with.
In spite of the election, the US retains a major behind-the-scenes role. But since the Cabinet will be a coalition of different parties, the prime minister will not have the same power as Ayad Allawi, the current incumbent, who was essentially appointed by the US.
The turnout figure of 58% is high enough to give credibility to the new Assembly, though it is much lower than hoped by those who hailed the poll two weeks ago as a triumph of freedom.
The election was flawed in many ways since it was hard for small parties to get their message across, and even the big parties did not have their programmes widely published.
Some voters took part because of the poll’s significance as the first contested election in their lifetimes. Others had worries about jobs, power cuts and security.
Now they have a government that will have to listen. — Â