STATEMENT
BY
MARINA OTTAWAY
SENIOR ASSOCIATE DEMOCRACY AND RULE OF LAW
PROJECT
CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE
BEFORE
THE
HOUSE
ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE
UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
OCTOBER
29, 2003
The
stabilization of Iraq depends not only on
progress in re-establishing security, but
also on the formation of an Iraqi government
enjoying domestic and international
legitimacy. The installation of such
government would reduce opposition to the
American presence among Iraqis, prove to the
world that the United States will not stay
in Iraq as an occupying power longer than
absolutely necessary, and facilitate the
introduction of political and economic
reforms that can only be undertaken by a
sovereign Iraqi government. In helping set
up an elected, fully sovereign Iraqi
government, however, the United States is
caught between the need for speed and the
need to allow sufficient time for the Iraqis
to negotiate extensively and reach an
agreement on the many controversial issues
involved in designing a new political
system. As the United States’ own historical
experience shows, crafting a political
system that reconciles the demands and
allays the fears of different groups is a
demanding and time consuming task.
The
administration still hopes that an Iraqi
constitution can be written and approved in
six months and elections held in about a
year. This quick process also responds to
growing Iraqi and international pressure for
a speedy transfer of sovereignty from the
Coalition Provisional Authority to an Iraqi
government, as well as to domestic pressure
to limit the mounting financial and human
costs of the occupation. While the desire
for moving so quickly is understandable,
encouraging such an accelerated process
would be highly dangerous. The experience of
many other countries emerging from civil
conflict or forcible regime change shows
that hurriedly organized elections often
create more problems than they solve. Much
more thorough political preparation is
needed for elections to produce meaningful
and lasting results.
Undoubtedly Paul Bremer and the Coalition
Provisional Authority have the technical
resources to rush a constitution into place
and race through the logistical challenges
involved in setting up elections. But
short-circuiting the process of domestic
discussion, negotiation, and
consensus-building that should accompany the
crafting of a new Iraqi political system
would be unwise. It would likely result in
political institutions and processes that
many Iraqis feel little connection to and
that do not command the loyalty or respect
of some key political actors. Worse still,
early elections might provoke precisely the
sort of civil conflict that the United
States hopes so much to avoid.
Despite
these dangers, delaying the elections is not
a viable option. The U.S. government
decided early on after ousting Saddam
Hussein that a transfer of sovereignty back
to an Iraqi government would take place only
once elections are held. As a result, the
election timetable is hostage to the
inexorably growing pressure for
sovereignty. It did not have to be that
way. Other countries emerging from conflict
and regime change under some kind of
external occupying or administering force
have regained domestic sovereignty before
having elections. Afghanistan is just one
example. After the defeat of the Taliban in
October 2001, Afghanistan quickly gained its
own interim administration, led by President
Karzai, and a detailed transition roadmap,
finalized in Bonn in December 2001. With
sovereignty and a roadmap for transition
already in hand, Afghans have been willing
to wait for elections. The planned
elections of next year will take place close
to three years after the end of the war. In
Iraq, however, the United States made a
different choice, and it would be both
difficult and unwise to go back on the
commitment to transfer full sovereignty only
to an elected Iraqi government.
With
elections the gate to sovereignty in Iraq,
there is only one way to reconcile the
imperative of holding early elections with
the need for a lengthy process of political
consensus building and institutional
creation. This is to limit the first phase
of constitution writing to an interim
constitution and hold elections under that
interim constitution for a constituent
assembly and an interim government of
national unity. This would produce an
elected government to which the United
States could hand over sovereignty and
create an institutional framework to carry
out a longer-term, less hurried effort to
write a permanent constitution and create
permanent democratic institutions. Even with
more time Iraqis may not reach the
compromises necessary to make a democratic
system work. The history of Iraq is one of
political strife kept in check only by
authoritarian governments capable of
strong-arming all existing political forces
into submission. This is not a particularly
good starting point for building democracy,
but it is the reality on the ground, one
that makes it all the more important not to
rush the process.
The Danger of
Premature Elections
Rushing
to elections in countries emerging from
conflict or sudden regime collapse often
prevents the necessary process of
negotiation over the basic political rules
and bargains for a new democratic system.
Holding elections without a solid underlying
political consensus on the rules and
substance of a new political system presents
at least two major dangers.
First,
some of the major political forces may lack
confidence that if they do poorly in the
elections their basic interests will still
be protected by the system. They may refuse
to accept the results unless they win.
Several examples of such rejection of
results occurred in the 1990s, with
different but equally undesirable outcomes.
After a long civil war in Angola and then an
uncertain peace agreement, the two rival
armed movements, disguised as political
parties but still armed, agreed to
participate in elections in 1992. Each side
assumed it would win; neither was seriously
committed to a democratic process.
International technocrats under UN
supervision performed logistical miracles in
pulling off the elections, for naught. The
losing party launched another military
offensive within days of the elections and
ten more years of civil war followed.
In
Cambodia, opposition parties emerged
victorious from UN-sponsored elections held
two years after the 1991 peace agreement
that brought the long-running civil war to
an end. But the incumbent leader, Hun Sen,
refused to accept the results. Still in
control of the bureaucracy and the military,
he forced the parliament to accept the
formation of a government headed by two
prime ministers—himself and the head of the
winning party. Before long, however, he
grew discontented with sharing power and
seized full power militarily.
And in
Liberia, elections imposed by the
international community in 1997 reconfirmed
the dominant position of Charles Taylor, the
victorious leader of the armed group that
had devastated the country in years of war.
Liberians gave Taylor a majority vote not
because they liked him but because they
realized he would not allow himself to be
sidelined by an electoral loss and would
plunge the country back into war in response
to an unfavorable showing. Elections that
promised at least stability and perhaps the
start of a political liberalization process
brought neither. Taylor ruled repressively
and opposition forces returned to fighting.
The country lapsed again into disastrous
civil war, prompting recently another round
of international intervention, led by West
African peace keepers, with minor U.S.
support.
The
second danger of early elections is that
they can increase the power of radical,
uncompromising groups. Such political
forces tend to be the first to organize in
post-conflict situations and do well in
hurried elections. Citizens divided along
ethnic or religious lines are often wary of
the ability of a fragile new political
system to protect their core identity-based
interests and vote for radicals who promise
to defend such interests by any means.
Bosnia
is a telling example in this regard. At the
insistence of the international powers
occupying the country after the 1995 Dayton
Accords, Bosnia held elections just nine
months after the peace agreement was
reached. In those elections, which are now
widely viewed by political analysts as a
setback for reconciliation and
democratization, radical nationalist forces
on all three sides of the ethnic divide
defeated more moderate groups. New, more
moderate parties had insufficient time to
organize. Voters, still unsure whether the
new system would really protect them,
rewarded the radicals.
The
dangers of rejection and of radicalization
are present in Iraq. The most visible
groups on the emergent political scene are
those with clear ethnic or regional
identities. In a hurried political campaign
the more radicalized groups and the sharper
messages are likely to stand out. Other
groups, such as the new moderate, secular
organizations and the formerly exiled
organizations that the United States has
hoped would become major domestic forces,
are only just beginning to develop their
base. Moreover, the major groups that have
already emerged may not easily abide by
elections results if those results thwart
their ambitions or exacerbate their
grievances. The Kurdish parties have
governed a virtually independent region of
Iraq for a decade and would likely be loath
to submit to any elected government that
attempted to curb their autonomy. The
Shi’ia clerics already have a wide political
base and a surging sense of political
destiny, one they might be unwilling to
abandon if electoral results did not give
them what they want. The Sunnis elite,
struggling with the calamitous loss of their
dominant position, are unlikely to be very
happy with what elections will bring them.
Crafting a
Political System in Iraq
In
building a new political system, Iraqis will
have to reach agreement on an almost
overwhelming number of difficult, divisive
political issues. The most important and
divisive, but by no means the only, issues
that will arise in writing a constitution
include the following:
-
In devising a federal
system for Iraq, which many groups favor,
critical decisions will be necessary about
the boundaries of the new internal states
and the degree of autonomy they possess.
The Kurds have already drafted a
constitutional proposal calling for a
federation composed of one Kurdish and one
Arab state, with significant autonomy for
the states. Other Iraqis want to see
states with less autonomy and with
boundaries set in accordance with
population size and geography,
disregarding ethnic and religious lines.
Still others would be interested in
boundaries that maximize Shi’ia power, or
enhance Sunni influence, or protect
minorities.
-
A fundamental choice will
need to be made whether to have a
presidential or a parliamentary system.
The presidential system would be in
keeping with the strong executive
tradition of Iraq and other Arab countries
but would raise the specter of a return to
strongman rule. A parliamentary system
would be less threatening but more alien,
and could be more easily paralyzed by
dissension and instability.
-
Equally hard and
contentious will be the decision whether
to incorporate, and if so, how to
incorporate into Iraq’s new constitution
and legal institutions the principles
derived from the vast body of Islamic laws
and interpretation knows as the sharia.
In
addition to constitutional issues, Iraq will
also face major choices in establishing the
core laws and procedures necessary for the
construction of a democratic electoral
process, including the following:
-
In adopting a new electoral
system, should Iraq opt for a system of
proportional representation, for single
member districts, or for a mixed system?
Proportional representation is favorable
to small parties and can potentially allow
better representation of national
minorities. It also can lead to unstable
legislatures. With their winner-take-all
quality, single member constituencies tend
to eliminate small parties and render it
more difficult to achieve representation
for minorities. But they are often
relatively stable and create stronger ties
between elected representatives and their
constituents.
-
In writing a law on
political parties there will arise
critical issues about their registration.
For example, should the registration of
parties with a religious identity be
allowed, creating the possibility of an
Islamist victory or at least a strong
Islamist voice in government? Or should
such parties be outlawed as incompatible
with liberal democracy, leading a part of
the population to feel disenfranchised?
-
Establishing a voter
registration system will be more than a
technical challenge; it will require
choices with important political
implications. Ideally, the registration
of voters should be preceded by a national
census and the issuance of identity cards
and voter registration cards to all
Iraqis. But a census before next summer
is out of the question, partly because of
time, partly because census taking in
countries with a heterogeneous population
and poor record keeping is a politically
charged exercise that can upset carefully
constructed balances. Though countries
facing transitional elections often do
register voters without a prior census,
the result is frequently controversial.
Minorities complain they are under
represented and opposition groups blame
their poor performance on inaccurate voter
lists.
These
myriad constitutional, legal, and procedural
issues will inevitably arise in crafting a
new political system in Iraq. They would be
contentious in any context. They will be
particularly difficult to solve in Iraq
given its ethnic and religious divisions,
its history of conflict and repression, and
its lack of experience with even partial
efforts to democratize. This does not mean
that reaching consensus is impossible and
that Iraq can never be democratic. It only
means that these issues need to be
thoroughly aired and compromises must be
negotiated at length. Thus expectations for
a rapid process are not realistic.
Fundamental issues cannot all be settled
within the next nine months or even the next
year no matter how hard both Iraqis and the
CPA work. Indeed the projected timetable is
extremely short even by the standards of the
typical hurried post-conflict election,
which usually takes about two years to
organize.
The Value of
the Provisional
Under
these circumstances, there are only two ways
to ready Iraq for elections by the second
half of 2004. One way is to treat the
process of political construction and
preparation as a technical rather than a
political challenge, keeping most decisions
in the hands of very limited circle of Iraqi
elites and CPA officials and minimizing
wider political negotiations and public
participation in the process. Paul Bremer
promised that “the constitution will be
widely circulated, discussed and debated
among the Iraqi people” and ratified in a
referendum. Yet, it is impossible that the
constitution could be written, widely
debated within Iraq, and voted on in the six
months of the timetable for the constitution
Secretary of State Colin Powell still hopes
can be met. Given its near complete
authority over political and legal matters,
the CPA could give U.S.-supported aid
technocrats leeway to race the country
through the logistical preparations for
elections. Constitutions, electoral
systems, rules for the registration of
parties, voter registration mechanisms and
all the rest can be pulled ready-made off
the shelf. But no matter what miracles of
organization and efficiency outside experts
manage to accomplish, Iraq will not be
politically ready to adopt a permanent
constitution and hold elections leading to
the formation of a government in which only
the winners participate. There are no
technical shortcuts to the necessarily
lengthy processes of political compromise,
consensus building, and civic education.
Overlooking this fact could lead to outcomes
similar to those witnessed in Cambodia,
Angola, Liberia or Bosnia.
The CPA
should therefore pursue a different course.
The constitution writing beginning now
should be limited to producing an interim
constitution or basic law. The document
would contain a broad commitment to
democratic principles and respect for human
rights; institutionally, however, it would
only provide a minimalist and temporary
framework needed to elect an interim
government of national unity that would rule
the country for three years, and a
constituent assembly that would oversee the
writing of a permanent constitution in the
same period. Under this approach the United
States would fulfill its commitment to
transfer sovereignty to an elected
government in the second half of 2004, but
avoid many of the risks of early elections.
The elections would be for significantly
lower stakes than those currently being
discussed. Yet the process would create
nascent democratic institutions that would
have the legitimacy and the time necessary
to take the Iraqi political class and the
society through the inevitably difficult
process of settling the many choices and
dilemmas that arise in constructing a
permanent democratic system.
The
interim constitution should be kept as
simple as possible. It should establish for
the three-year period of interim government
rule a unitary rather than a federal system.
This is not because a unitary system is the
best for a democratic Iraq but because the
contentious issues of federalism cannot be
quickly solved. Preferably, the interim
constitution should provide for a
parliamentary system rather than a
presidential one, with proportional
representation. This would avoid the
dangerous winner-take-all quality of an
early election for a strong presidential
post and would make the constituent assembly
as inclusive as possible. The registration
of political parties should be kept quite
open to encourage new organizations to form
and to dispel fears that registration rules
are being used to exclude some groups.
Voter registration should proceed using a
very simple method, such as election day
finger marking, to encourage a large turnout
and make as many Iraqis as possible feel
they are part of the process.
Establishing an interim constitution and an
interim government before moving to a
permanent constitution and permanent
political institutions would mean
deliberately postponing many of the most
difficult political choices facing Iraq. It
would not mean sweeping them under the rug,
as would happen if a permanent constitution
were quickly put into place and aid
technocrats took responsibility for solving
the major issues of an electoral process.
An
objection that has been raised against the
idea of putting the writing of the
constitution in the hands of an elected
assembly is that this body would be
dominated by shi’ias, who constitute 60
percent of the population, and that this
would lead to the transformation of Iraq
into a Iran-style theocracy. But not all
Shi’ias support radical Islamists—a poll
conducted in August by Zogby International
in four cities indicated that only 27
percent of Shi’ias polled favored an Islamic
government. Furthermore, a constitution is
never approved by a simple majority, but by
a qualified majority, and this would make it
even more difficult for radicals to have
their way.
The
approach suggested here does not guarantee
that when Iraqis eventually confront and try
to solve the challenges of building
democratic institutions they will reach
happy compromises that all major political
actors can accept. But it does increase the
probability that this will happen. In the
end, some groups will lose out, as some
always do in a democratic process. The
losers are more likely to accept such an
outcome, however, if the issues have been
the subject of real negotiations and handled
within the framework of institutions – such
as a constituent assembly—that were chosen
by Iraqis rather than the CPA.
The Bush
administration is understandably anxious to
have an elected government in Baghdad, both
so it can claim success in establishing
democracy and begin to implement an exit
strategy. But as has been painfully learned
in many countries around the world, holding
elections does not a democracy make. In
some cases, elections are not even the
beginning of democracy. Elections are a
necessary part of the process of building
new democratic institutions. But if
elections are rushed and held without
adequate political preparation, they can
provoke political conflict, distort emergent
processes of political representation, and
aggravate rather than heal societal
divisions. The idea of a slower transition
with interim steps and provisional
institutions may not seems as satisfying or
decisive as a democratic big bang. And it
may well be resisted by those Iraqi
political actors who stand to benefit from a
rapid process that rewards those already in
a favored political position. But a more
gradual process, rooted in extended
negotiation and consensus-building on the
part of major domestic political actors, as
well as broader public debate and
participation, corresponds to lessons from
other countries and the real needs of Iraq.
