DESPITE assertions by some members that it would not, Iraq’s Parliament yesterday reversed its decision to change the rules governing next week’s constitutional referendum. While the U-turn is welcome, it would have been far better had the amendment not been passed in the first place.
The suggested change effectively abolished the provision that the constitutional referendum would fail if it were rejected by two-thirds of all registered voters in three of Iraq’s 18 provinces. Iraqi Sunnis, who make up 20 percent of the population, are in the majority in four provinces. Instead of two-thirds of all registered voters, the amendment would have changed the condition to two-thirds of all who voted. On the basis of the 60 percent average turnout in January’s parliamentary elections, that would have made it virtually impossible for the constitution to be rejected. A vote where there could be no doubt of the outcome would, it is clear, have been no vote at all.
Washington was markedly muted in its response to the Shiite-dominated Parliament’s moving of the goal posts. It wisely allowed the UN, responsible for overseeing the referendum, to be heard.
Faced with a UN threat to abandon the monitoring of the vote under the new rules, the Iraqi Parliament did in fact back down.
Unfortunately much damage has already been done. Many moderate Sunnis believe that they have now seen the writing on the wall for them in the new Iraq. What little faith they still had in their place in the new democratic process will have been undermined. The calls for a boycott of this vote, like those for a boycott of January’s election, may now be all too tempting. If the Sunni community en masse ignores the referendum, then however convincing the endorsement of the constitution by other Iraqis, it will still lack legitimacy.
The new Iraq has to be all-embracing. To be genuinely pluralist, all communities must willingly sign up to the enterprise. Washington is at least right about this. The alternative is the bloody horror of civil war. It is frightening to contemplate that in trying to change the rules, some legislators may have been seeking to provoke the Sunnis into abandoning the democratic process. “After all,” one Shiite MP was quoted as saying, “the Sunnis aren’t interested in democracy anyway.” No attitude could be better calculated to radicalize Sunni moderates, whose hopes of peace are somewhere between the bigoted men of violence in their own community and the increasing disdain of the Shiites.
The greatest victory for peace would be a large turnout of all Iraqis next week. In a way the outcome of the vote matters less than that the majority of Iraqis, regardless of community, are seen to value the ballot box over the bomb, the bullet and bloodshed. Because it was born of compromise, the proposed constitution falls short of everyone’s aspirations but its strength lies in the areas where there is agreement. It thus offers a real foundation for peace.
