A rchive Date
[ 25-04-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Iraq ]
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[http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/outlook/1882749
A constitutional monarchy to govern new Iraq?
By JAMES CLARK
April 24, 2003, 6:24PM
CLERICS, expatriates, reconstituted henchmen - everyone but Saddam Hussein's kissin' cousins - claim to have a vision for postwar Iraq. Passions exploding after long years under Saddam's heel swirl off the canvas. Overlapping visions make for a blurred image.
History should be our guide and, building on its own history, Iraq needs to shed the overweening power of its executive branch of government. Most Near Eastern dictators command presidential positions. Elections only tend to reinforce their despotism.
Any new regime in Iraq needs a diluted executive branch in a federal system. A split executive branch, with a figurehead as monarch, with many ceremonial and few real powers, joined to an elected prime minister wielding de facto authority, may address the concern. They would lead the upper and lower houses, respectively, of elected representatives.
Iraq's 18 existing provinces could serve as democratic units, dispersing the influence of the three major ethnic groups, Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni. Each province could elect at least two representatives, regardless of population concentrations. They would sit in the upper house.
The lower house, the domain of the prime minister, could return elected representatives purely on the basis of demographics. A bicameral government would provide representation to Iraqis without permitting ethnic strife to dominate the political realm. It would diffuse tribal loyalties while permitting their limited expression. Tribalism lives tolerably with royalty.
Object to the idea of king? Consider the countries surrounding Iraq. The most democratically inclined are all monarchies: Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. Contrast these with Syria, Iran and Egypt, truncated monarchies sprouting repressive dictatorships. A monarch in power would also serve to assuage Saudi concerns about abolition of royal families and present a direction in which democratic reform is possible.
Religious leaders, accustomed to wielding public influence, could have representation in the upper house. For centuries Anglican divines sat as the lords spiritual in the English House of Lords, doing little violence to an unwritten constitution. In the Islamic context, with no history of pure secular church-and-state division, this might serve as a functional compromise.
A gaggle of voices cavil that Iraq is not ready for democracy, but if Mali can manage democracy, why not Iraq? If not now, after 5,000 years of civilization, when will Iraq be ready? Mongolia is a democracy, in the shadow of its heritage under the great Khan.
Iraq can certainly afford to try democracy. There are enormous oil riches at the disposal of a new Iraqi government. Indeed, few countries are poised to be as rich, and such riches can aid in rebuilding a civil society that existed before the Baathists came to power. Besides, the northern part of the country already is democratic.
There are many problems, of course, but that is hardly a reason not to try. There are always reasons not to attempt democracy, but some system must replace the mess of the failed Baathists and it might as well give the people of Iraq a chance to choose their own destiny.
History is not so stern a foe as some suppose. Prior to Baathist ascendancy in 1968, an independent intellectual society flourished. The Baghdad College of Law, founded in 1908, produced a culture of jurists remarkable for their wide learning and resistance to corruption. The Solidarity Club, made up mainly of professionals and students, helped to create the intellectual climate to remove British control.
More recently, a beacon has shone in the north. The Kurds have had elections in the last 10 years. There is a press with some freedom. Political and cultural tolerance is so pervasive that there is even a saying in the city of Sulimaneya: "Some day Europe will be as tolerant. "
These advances were made despite the oppressive regime in the south, hostile neighbors in Turkey and Iran and the economic embargo against Kurds leveled by Saddam Hussein. Northern Iraq is an example of a fledgling parliamentary democracy. Examples of democracy and civil society dwell within Iraq itself. A constitution exists in outline.
After the Baath Party rose to power, Saddam himself bestrode the "Project for the Rewriting of History." Recasting history along the lines of reality would begin to impose order on the maelstrom that is postwar Iraq.
Clark is chief executive officer of Millennium Relief and Development Services, a Houston-based humanitarian aid agency with operations in more than 20 countries, including the Kurdish autonomous zone in Northern Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan and Lebanon.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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