OxBlog

# Posted 11:36 PM by Ariel David Adesnik

DEMOCRATIC TRIUMPH OR WASTE OF PAPER? It looks like Iraq will have an interim constitution by tomorrow in spite of Friday's sudden cancellation of the signing ceremony. One of NRO's guest authors thinks that the document just papers over more profound conflicts. For example:

One need look no further than the controversy over December 2003's IGC decree 137 which introduced sharia (Islamic religious law) in the place of secular family law to see how poorly democratic values are entrenched. Passed at a time when key secular members of the IGC were out of the country, and the chairman of the IGC was a Shia Islamist, decree 137 was denounced by the Kurds, women's groups, and some secular parties as undemocratic and discriminatory. Ambassador Bremer refused to sign decree 137, which meant that it could not be implemented.

Although decree 137 never had any force, the IGC bowed to pressure from women's groups in particular and symbolically repealed the decree on February 27, 2004. The reaction of some of the Shia Arab members of the IGC to the February 27, 2004 vote was troubling and revealing. Unhappy at losing the vote on decree 137, eight Shia members of the IGC walked out of the session when women's groups in the room cheered and shouted their pleasure at the vote. The eight Shia members did not just accept their defeat with ill grace. They then attempted to nullify their defeat through the interim constitution negotiations, a bid to put Islam on the statute books by every route available. The Shia Islamists and their allies are likely to continue with these tactics and can be expected to seek to undermine the current compromise text.

From a different perspective, this might just be a story of democracy at work. After all, there were no violent protests, no denunciations of the democratic system as anathema to Islam. Just hardball politics of the kind you see in any modern state. Of course, the Shi'ites can afford to be patient because they expect to dominate the new Iraq. But calculated or not, that kind of restraint on the part of a brutally repressed and suddenly liberated people suggests a certain faith in the democratic process. (Thanks to BM for the link.)

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