Council divided over constitution
BAGHDAD -- Far from the turmoil of Iraq's streets, in discreet hallway whispers and closed-door meetings, the provisional Governing Council is struggling with severe religious and political splits as it begins to grapple with what many see as the most important political issue facing the country -- the writing of a new Iraqi constitution.
The US-appointed council itself is deeply and evenly divided on who should write the new constitution, members and other officials say. The 12 Shi'ite Muslim members are calling for direct election of a constitution-writing body, and the 12 who represent other religious and ethnic groups are favoring selection of the framers by the religious, social, and intellectual leaders of Iraq's provinces.
In addition, the general public is split over what kind of political system the constitution should create. Recent polling by the nonpartisan Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies showed 31 percent of the public wants a democratic system, 34 percent wants an Islamic system, and 24 percent wants a mix of the two. The poll's margin of error was plus-or-minus 3 percent.
The stakes in the unfolding drama, which so far has been overshadowed by guerrilla attacks and by the international debate on Iraq's future, are immense. The council's credibility and that of the US-led occupation depend heavily on convincing the public and the world that the country is headed toward a government run by Iraqis freely chosen by their fellow citizens.
"It is one of the most difficult issues of the Governing Council, period . . . and very important for the future of Iraq," said a senior council official, who spoke on condition that his name not be published. "You don't want the public to feel you are not consulting them in forming the committee to write the constitution, but at the same time, there are so many problems [with holding a general election] and we do not have much time."
Council members say writing a sound constitution takes a lot of time. Almost two years passed from the end of the US-led war in Afghanistan until that country's new draft constitution was unveiled recently. Drafting the US Constitution took about the same amount of time.
Iraq is under strong pressure from many directions to move faster. The United States says it will not withdraw from the country until there is a constitution and a democratically elected government. France, Russia, and Germany are pushing for a rapid restoration of Iraq's political sovereignty. Internally, some Iraqis feel their first democratically elected government can be elected only on the basis of a new constitution, while others feel elections could come first and the constitutiuon confirmed afterward.
Leaders of the Shi'ites, by far Iraq's largest religious group, have so far been successful in instructing their people to work nonviolently to achieve political power. But after decades of oppression at the hands of the ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, the Shi'ite public is anxious for construction of a political system that will protect newfound freedoms.
"Before everything is the subject of writing the constitution and who is going to be writing it," said Baghdad Appellate Judge Dara Nur al-Din, chairman of the council committee that researched the options. The committee's recommendations to the full body on how to proceed was submitted about three weeks ago and probably will be decided upon within the next three weeks, he said.
Din, a Sunni who was imprisoned for declaring unconstitutional a law passed by Hussein's Revolutionary Command Council, said he favors having local leaders appoint 10 to 15 delegates from each governorate to what in effect will be a constitutional convention of about 250 members. "The peasant and the farmer do not know what is a constitution," he said, adding that the security situation will impede free campaigning and balloting.
But Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leading Shi'ite on the council, said, "If we want a true and legitimate constitution that we can defend and that will have international legitimacy, this only can be written by people who are elected."
A major issue in the elect-or-appoint debate is whether elections to the constitutional convention can be held before there is a new census of Iraq's population. There is broad agreement that the last reasonably accurate census was taken in 1957, before the Ba'ath Party took power and began juggling the figures as it pursued ethnic political strategies against the Shi'ites and the Kurds in the interest of ethnic politics.
Citing estimates by the national planning agency, Din said nine to 12 months would be required to plan, conduct, and tabulate a census, then three months more for campaigning and elections for the constitutional convention. That is far more time than the leading international critics of the US-led war and occupation find acceptable, and council sources said members are being urged by US officials to move as quickly as possible.
Hakim and other Shi'ite political leaders say a census would not have to be taken for the constitution framers to be elected. "We have ration cards by which all the people can receive food, and there is no problem in the whole country with this," he said, suggeting the cards could be used in the same way as voter registration cards. "It could be done maybe in three to four months if there was a serious will to accomplish this."
Hakim acknowledged that what he called "small numbers" of people who have been oppressed and of Iraqis who returned from exile after the fall of Hussein do not have ration cards, and that security would be a problem in "a few places." But these problems could be dealt with, he said, and "90 percent of the Iraqi people could manage to cast their votes."
Census or no census, non-Shi'ites -- Sunni Muslim Arabs, Kurds, Christians, communists, and Turkmen who are Sunni but not Arab -- have lined up on the side of selections rather than elections.
"A general election would not produce a good result," said Mohsen Abdul Hameed, a Sunni leader who is on the council and is secretary general of the Iraqi Islamic Party. "The members of the constitution committee should be specialists."
The wrangling over census and elections hints at a potentially more explosive issue that could emerge from the constitution-writing debate -- the issue of whether a majority of Iraqis are Sunni or Shi'a. A broad variety of sources -- from the US Central Intelligence Agency to international human rights organizations -- estimate that Shi'ites comprise 60 to 65 percent of Iraq's population. This is disputed with increasing vigor by the Sunnis; leaflets and sheets of statistics are being circulated through Sunni mosques purporting to document a Sunni majority.
"The Shi'ites are not the majority," Hameed said. "The Sunnis of the Arabs, Turkmen and Kurds, and Christians, and other minorities form at least 60 percent of the Iraqi population."
Shi'ites want general elections to prove they are the majority now, when they can likely control security and thus produce a big turnout in predominantly Shi'a areas, he said. "We want a correct census first."
Three proposed constitutions already have been written, according to Sadoun Al-Dulame, executive director of the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, a think tank and polling organization founded after Hussein's overthrow -- one by liberals, one by Islamists, and one by adherents of the Arab nationalism of the late Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. When the constitution's framers get down to resolving substantive differences among these drafts, Dulame said, they will find that "there is a wide gap between democracy and Islam" and that reconciling differences between Islamists and Iraqis who may be Muslim but who want a secular democracy will be difficult.
Islamists' "agenda for human rights excludes women, excludes religious minorities, excludes a lot," Dulame said. "The essential first step in democracy is to recognize the `other.' "
Regardless of the method chosen to draft the constitution, undue haste could lead to failure of efforts to democratize Iraq, said Professor Mazin Al-Ramadhani, who founded the college of political science at Al-Nahrain University, then was ousted by the Hussein regime.
"In the past, the constitution was never higher than the ruler -- the ruler was higher than the constitution," Ramadhani said. "You cannot impose democracy. It is a learned process. . . .. We need time."
Charles A. Radin can be reached at radin@globe.com 