Iraq: Of Governments and Unity

20051229

 

         The news of the past several days in Iraq has been mostly of the protests of some groups of Iraqis against what they call unfair and fraudulent elections. While there is some evidence that fraud did occur on a limited basis, even the UN oversight panel for the elections concedes that the elections do not need to be rerun.

         In fact, what we may be seeing in Iraq is just good old politics, Iraqi style. The truth is that the political group that won the most seats, the United Iraqi Alliance, did not gain enough seats to form a government without a coalition. As a result, protests and negotiations may be as much political maneuvering to form that coalition as it is a complaint against fraud.

         What we see in Iraq in these days after the election is arguably the very result that greater part of the West would like to see in the transition of a formerly totalitarian state to democracy. In the transition in Iraq, the majority gained the majority of the power, but not so much of it that it was able to exclude the minorities from the power.

         Further, this reality has forced the politicians and the people to engage in a public debate that is clearly Iraqi in nature. Some in the West assume that, if there are Iraqis protesting in the streets claiming fraud, something has gone wrong with those elections, however, the reality may very well be that this is just political maneuvering.

         Consider the aftermath of both the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections in the US. While there was not an insurgency spreading violence in the US, the political protests at the end of those elections cycles looked much similar to what is going on in Iraq today. There were disaffected political opponents marching through the streets, claiming fraud and demanding a recount, and pundits in the media suggesting revotes.

         If these things occur in a democracy of 229 years, how much more in a democracy of less than a year? Indeed, the existence of these things signals the success of the political process in Iraq, not its impending failure.

 

DLH