BAGHDAD, 9 June 2005 — An alliance of influential Sunni Muslims in Iraq said yesterday that it would not take part in drafting a constitution unless its community was given a fair number of seats on the committee working on the project. The Gathering of the Sunni People agreed at a conference to demand that 25 Sunni Arabs be named to the committee, on which 55 members of Parliament now sit.
The Shiite-led government has said it could expand the committee to accommodate more Sunnis - at present only two have seats on the body. The government has promised Sunnis a prominent role in the political process despite the fact that few of the once-dominant minority took part in the January election which produced the present Parliament, meaning there are few Sunni legislators.
“The number of our representatives must be 25 so that we have fair rights with the current constitutional committee,” said the alliance in a resolution agreed by delegates. “If the National Assembly rejects this we will resort to discussions with representatives between us. If they stick to their position we suggest suspending our participation and the concerned parties bear the responsibility of not giving us the chance to participate.”
Any Sunni boycott of the constitutional process would deal a blow to the government’s efforts to bring in more Sunnis in a strategy aimed at defusing the Sunni-led insurgency. Although they make up around 20 percent of the population and dominated Iraq during the rule of Saddam Hussein, Sunni Arabs have been left with minimal representation in Parliament because many of them boycotted the Jan. 30 elections. There are 17 Sunni Arab lawmakers in Iraq’s 275-member Parliament.
“The constitution cannot be drafted without the participation of all Iraqis. Any constitution written without that would not be legitimate,” said the Sunni alliance. Sunni Arabs have a potential veto under a rule written in to the UN-sponsored interim constitution at the insistence of the Kurdish minority concentrated in the north. The new text can be blocked if voters in three of Iraq’s 18 provinces reject it in a referendum.
Sunni demands for a greater role come at a time of intense guerrilla violence that has killed more than 800 people since the government was formed in late April and raised fears Iraq could be moving towards civil war. Iraqi officials have said the constitution will be ready by an Aug. 15 deadline even if Sunni Arabs are given time to choose representatives to help draft a document.
Under Iraq’s political timetable, once a constitution is written it must be approved by a referendum. If it is approved, a new general election will be held by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, a leading think tank said Iraq should delay drafting of its first post-Saddam constitution to ensure that the crucial document has the support of all the war-torn country’s disparate groups. “Iraqis face a dilemma: rush the constitutional process and meet the current deadline of Aug. 15 ... or encourage a process that is inclusive, transparent and participatory in an effort to increase popular buy-in of the final product,” the International Crisis Group said in a report.
The conflict-resolution outfit said the decision would be a difficult one but that a document “based on popular input and consensus” may be the best way to lessen support for the insurgency and stabilize the country.
However, the Transitional Administrative Law under which Iraq is currently run allows for a one-off six-month delay to be announced by Aug. 1. Constitutions drawn up over the past 10 years have taken between seven months in East Timor and four years in Ukraine, said the Brussels-based ICG.
But following delays in forming a government after January’s elections and in finalizing the composition of the constitution-drafting committee “an extremely tight timetable has been further reduced to three months.” Of particular importance, it said, was bringing marginalized Sunnis into the process. The committee did in fact make such an offer to Sunnis on Sunday, and they are currently deciding on who should take part.
But the ICG said its main concern was drawing the population at large into the drafting process. “Not only to secure a yes vote in the referendum but also to forge a national consensus and thereby marshal support for the new political order as a whole.” Without broad consultation, many Iraqis will believe the constitution “is of foreign authorship”, adding that the TAL appeared to have been “pulled out of a hat” and signed in March 2004 “without even the merest hint of public input.”
“To negotiate a new social contract in a deeply traumatized and fractured society within less than seven months is hard enough; to do so in one-third that time is virtually impossible.” American, British and UN officials have repeatedly called for the process to stick to its original timetable, and the ICG said Iraqi leaders may hesitate to delay the process because of that pressure.
