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Project Director Gordon Robison's writings on the media and public diplomacy issues in the Middle East.

NOW THAT THE VOTES ARE COUNTED…
FEB 26, 2005 - 1:19PM PDT
AMMAN, JORDAN
by Gordon Robison

Iraq’s election went off better than expected. Now that the results have been announced the hard part begins.

Though Ibrahim Al-Jafaari’s emergence as the prime ministerial candidate of the United Iraqi Alliance makes him the leading contender to head the country’s next government his grasp on the levers of power remains far from certain. The Shia-led UIA emerged with a thin majority in the 275 seat National Assembly, but it is far short of the two-thirds needed to form a government. This is especially the case since the UIA is hardly a cohesive block. It is hard to imagine any grouping containing both Abdel Aziz Al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and Ahmed Chalabi holding together for long. The current Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi (a secular Shiite) is openly courting some of its members in a bid to keep his job.

The Kurds appear to be watching all of this warily. Their role, or lack of it, in the new government will be a key indicator of the country’s future. Kurdistan’s two main parties fought the election as a single slate. When facing the rest of Iraq their leadership is relatively united and pretty clear about what it wants. For now their list of demands does not include breaking up the country, but there is little doubt they will do so if they feel that is the only way to preserve the society they have built in northern Iraq over the last dozen years

To no one’s surprise there are virtually no Sunnis in the assembly. President Ghazi al-Yawr’s list managed only five seats. How the Sunni political class, and the Sunni population at large, deal with this will be one of the great unknowns of the coming months. An intriguing titbit came from an Iraqi friend of mine, a journalist who comes from one of the larger and more important Sunni tribes. A few days after the election he told me he could have voted in relative safety because he works in the Green Zone, but chose not to do so out of solidarity with his neighbors in the overwhelmingly Sunni district of Abu Gharib, on Baghdad’s western outskirts. Many of his neighbors, he said, wanted to vote but thought it was simply too dangerous to do so. He says he does expect them to vote in October when the new constitution is put to a referendum. If his reading of his neighbors is correct this is a particularly good sign, and one that reinforces the emerging conventional wisdom that Sunni leaders may now believe their boycotts were shortsighted.

The real question is whether the leaders who are now emerging with some electoral legitimacy can deal with each other with a measure of maturity, farsightedness and statesmanship. The, admittedly short, history of Iraq’s emerging political class does not inspire much confidence on this score, but the election was a surprise, so things might go better than expected. Writing a new constitution by October is going to be a tall order. Getting it approved in a vote a month later may be even harder, especially since a two-thirds ‘no’ vote in any three provinces sends the entire process back to the drawing board. It is going to be a long spring and summer in Iraq – but one well worth watching.

grr

Read Comments:

abdul salam on February 27, 2005 @ 5:37 am:
yah it is going to be long spring and hotter summer than usual. the sunni coumunity are felt desapointed frastruated one hawaks whom mastermind the bycot idea said these peopel as if not aware of the consquencess of thires stands and blaming them of loving the prestiges of power and more over he went deep to history and started explaning to them the story of prophet moses and pharow and told them the mother of moses only put her son in sea(moses)while our act more better than this action regarding fighting our enemy on otherside the election result might given the other party ashortsight facts because the process of assasinations gearup in targitting sunni and sunni targeting shiaa many victms from both sides asssinated during last weekes.and the situation will worsen once shiaa assume ministry of interior and ministry of defence currently the ministry of interior run by sunni and ministry of defence by shiaa but anti iranian lobby so any fraction by those ministries if they will run by pro supremcouncil will consider fore sunni as provocative act and might help ignating the un declear civil war god forbid. but also there are good signales ahmed chalabi yesterday visited the society of muslim scholars and discuss with them the politicall process and the ways and mean of wide consititution.

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