Democracy in Iraq
Por su interés y relevancia, he seleccionado el artículo que sigue para incluirlo en este sitio web. (L. B.-B.)
Getting rid of the Iraqi dictatorship was the easy part. Installing a working
democracy in its place is proving somewhat more difficult and complicated.
Iraq's newly elected National Assembly failed yet again Tuesday to
accomplish a modest task, one that should have been completed several weeks ago:
decide on a speaker for the new Parliament, approve a new president, two vice
presidents and a prime minister. By all accounts this would be a tall order in a
full-fledged democracy, let alone in one just starting out.
In Iraq, where
the experiment in democracy is still very much in its infancy and where
sectarian divisions play a major role, it may take a tad longer to sink in.
For example, Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish leader expected to be named president
Tuesday, did not show up for the assembly session. Instead, the assembly
members, the first democratically elected since the downfall of Saddam Hussein's
regime, erupted into a rowdy protest. Perhaps feeling somewhat self-conscious,
the parliamentarians opted to evict the press and complete the session behind
closed doors.
In a somewhat confusing outburst from the floor, deputies from opposing
factions tried to make themselves heard over opposition shouts. The live TV
broadcast of the session suddenly went off the air, and security officials asked
reporters and cameramen to evacuate the hall.
Iraqis have eagerly anticipated appointment of a new speaker and other
officials since the Jan. 31 election of the 275-member House. That election in
turn should have facilitated formation of a transitional national government,
allowing it to begin drafting a new Iraqi constitution. But now, by all
optimistic estimates, Iraqis foresee no positive development in the country's
political stagnation before next year.
These delays anger the average Iraqi, for whom political setback translates
into continued hardships. For the average Iraqi, it means continued electricity
cuts, continued water shortages, continued gas station queues -- ironic in a
country with the world's second-largest oil reserves -- continued rampant street
crime and, most frustrating, continued occupation by U.S. and other foreign
military forces.
At the same time, Iraqis continue to live amid insecurity with insurgents
kidnapping and killing not only foreigners but increasingly targeting Iraqi
security forces and recruits. Last week, three Romanian journalists were
kidnapped near their Baghdad hotel, and a car bomb exploded in the northern
oil-rich city of Kirkuk, killing one person and wounding more than 12.
"We're very disappointed," Hathem Hassan Thani, 31, a political science
graduate student at Baghdad University, told United Press International
correspondent Beth Potter in Baghdad.
The trouble boils down to the question of power-sharing between the
country's Sunnis, a long-dominant minority in Iraq, and Shi'ites and Kurds. The
Sunnis, who for the most part boycotted the January elections, now want to get a
foot inside the political game of rebuilding Iraq.
The Shi'ites, who represent about 60 percent to 65 percent of the country's
25 million people, won the majority of the vote last January. The United Iraqi
Alliance led by Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, the leading religious Shi'ite
figure in Iraq, received nearly 50 percent of the vote. The Kurds, who live
mainly in the northern part of the country, took 27 percent. And the Sunnis, who
largely avoided the ballot box partly in protest, partly from of threatened
terrorist retribution if they voted, now say they wish to take part in drafting
the new constitution.
As Miss Potter reported Tuesday, "Deep divides appeared between the
assembly's Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish members even before the session started."
The Shi'ites are blaming the Kurds and current interim President Ghazi al-Yawar
for holding up progress of forming a government.
"The Iraqi people are very itchy. The street is very nervous," said Saad
Jawar Qindeel, a spokesman for the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in
Iraq, one of two dominant religious-based parties that won the United Iraqi
Alliance ticket. "There's a lot of talk of people ready to protest," he told
Miss Potter.
With the insurgency still trying to undermine Iraq's slow crawl toward
democracy, street protests would invite more trouble and potential violence that
would further widen Iraqi political divisions. Those are the dangers Iraq faces
as it adapts to the realities of a working democratic system.
Behind political shenanigans and vying for key Cabinet posts such as oil,
defense and the interior -- is not only the matter of who wields real power in
Iraq but who controls the money.
As Winston Churchill once said, "Democracy is the worst form of government,
except for all those others that have been tried." Iraqis, who have yet to try
democracy, will give it another chance Sunday, when the Parliament reconvenes.
Claude Salhani is
international editor for United Press International.