August 24, 2005

Constitution or Constipation?

So will we really be seeing an Iraqi constitution in another three days, or is that just another crock of Bush*it?

The head of the constitutional panel says three days is not enough. Disenfrachised Sunnis are openly threatening civil war. They've already delayed the announcement twice - even though that is illegal - and many involved Iraqis have publicly said that the USA seems to want a new constitution in more of a hurry than they do (it would sure get Cindy Sheehan off the front pages).

So what's going on? Bush keeps scheduling press conferences so he can be the first to tell the world about the "breakthrough" (yep, another one) but talks keep failing and Bush ends up sounding like a broken record: "... fight them there so we don't have to fight them here ... making the USA safer ... yadda, yadda..."

And what exactly might this new, model "Democratic" constitution look like anyway? Juan Cole translates a few key passages:
Article 2:

Para. 1: Islam is the official religion of state, and is a fundamental source for legislation.

a) No law may be legislated that contravenes the essential verities of Islamic law.
Obviously, how you interpret "essential verities" is up to you - death to the infidels? Stoning adulterous women? It's Democracy, kids... but not as we know it!

If yet another three days is not enough, it is reasonable to assume that real agreement is simply not going to happen, or not happen in any meaningful grass-roots way.

It is looking as if this new constitution may be just a mirage in the desert heat, and that anything that emerges on paper now will have all the moral authority of Allawi's failed puppets or Bremer's CPA.

UPDATE: Surprise, surprise. Another deadline missed. I think this is the start of the civil war, folks.

6 comments:

French said...

Article 2:

Para. 1: Islam is the official religion of state, and is a fundamental source for legislation.

a) No law may be legislated that contravenes the essential verities of Islamic law.


In the interest of full disclosure, I'd be very interested to see what subsections "b", "c" and "d" say.

Wadard said...

Here is my rendering of some key passages:

Article 1: The Republic of Iraq is an independent state and sovereign. The form of government therein is republican and parliamentary, democratic and federal.

Article 2:

Para. 1: Islam is the official religion of state, and is a fundamental source for legislation. [Note: It is not THE source of legislation, though being A FUNDAMENTAL one may amount to much the same thing.

a) No law may be legislated that contravenes the essential verities of Islamic law. [Note: The TAL and earlier drafts said that law may not contravene the verities of Islam. By specifying ISLAMIC LAW-- ahkam al-Islam-- this text enshrines the shariah or Islamic canon law quite explicitly in the constitution and would allow religious jurists to question secular legislation.]

b) No law may be legislated that contravenes the principles of democarcy.

c) No law may be legislated that contravenes the rights and basic liberties enumerated in this constitution.

2. This constitution guarantees the preservation of the Islamic identity of the majority of the Iraqi people, just as it guarantees complete religious rights to all individuals, of freedom of religious belief and practice.

3.Iraq is a country of numerous peoples, religions and rites, and is a part of the Islamic world; and the Arab people within it form part of the Arab nation.

[Article 4 gives full recognition to Kurdish as a national language for official purposes, alongside Arabic.]

5) Law is sovereign. The people are the source of (governmental) powers and of their legitimacy, and exercise it through direct secret ballot and through its constitutional institutions . . .

Article 7 forbids racism, terrorism, excommunicating people [saying that someone who claims to be a Muslim is actually an infidel], ethnic cleansing, excluding these phenomena and anyone who incites to them from Iraq's political pluralism. Especially named in this regard is the "Saddamist Baath Party," which is banned here just as the Nazi Party is in post-war Germany. [The Sunni Arab delegates are complaining about this provision, and the mention of Saddam's name. Many are ex-Baathists.]

Wadard said...

Not MY renderings - Jaun Cole's.

French said...

Wadard, thanks for those. Here's a couple of others, from The Guardian via

http://alendalux.blogspot.com :

Article 151
No less than 25% of Council of Deputies seats go to women.
Here's some more:

Article (4):

1st -- Arabic and Kurdish are the two official languages for Iraq. Iraqis are guaranteed the right to educate their children in their mother tongues, such as Turkoman or Assyrian, in government educational institutions, or any other language in private educational institutions, according to educational regulations.


(Taken from the Guardian's excerpt: The Turkomen and Assyrian languages are the official languages in the Turkomen and Assyrian areas, and each territory or province has the right to use its own official language if residents have approved in a general referendum vote.)

[...] Article (14): Iraqis are equal before the law without discrimination because of gender, ethnicity, nationality, origin, color, religion, sect, belief, opinion or social or economic status.

[...] 1st -- The followers of every religion and sect are free in:
(a) the practice of their religious rites, including the (Shiite) Husseiniya Rites.

(b) the administration of religious endowments and their affairs and their religious institutions, and this will be organized by law.

2nd -- The state guarantees freedom of worship and the protection of its places.

elendil said...

gandhi, don't know if you caught Lateline, but this might interest you: Zionism key to Israeli-Palestinian conflict, says author.

Wadard said...

That's a workable constitution as far as I can see. Would be good to have a definate clause seperating mosque and state, and another making oligarchy illegal but it seems a good constitution to me

I saw that elendril, on late-line. A fascinating study by Jacqueline Rose. It show how intractable the conflict is, but there is a glimmer of hope, in that the power of zionism demonstrates how Israeli Jews are quite capable, possibly uniquely so, of coalescing around an idea, including, one assumes, the idea od peace and good-neighbourliness.

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