VOL. XLVII
No 05
02
The Political Scene (2 February 2004)
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has agreed to send a mission to Iraq to ascertain whether it is feasible to hold elections before the 30 June deadline for the transfer of sovereignty. Among the alternatives being discussed is the appointment of a three-man presidency.
UN To Send Mission To Iraq
After a week of demonstrations backing Ayatollah 'Ali Sistani’s demand for the direct election of the transitional assembly in Iraq, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) won a breathing space when the ayatollah called off the demonstrations on 23 January, saying – as usual, through an intermediary – that it is “vital today to wait until the US and the UN clarify their positions on the election procedure to choose the nature of the next Iraqi government and the basic law.” (Under the 15 November agreement between the CPA and the IGC, the CPA will “supervise” the selection of organizing committees which will nominate “caucuses” in Iraq’s 18 governorates which will select a transitional assembly which will choose a provisional government to which sovereignty can be transferred. Ayatollah Sistani finds this procedure unnecessarily complicated.) However, on the same day, in what looks very much like an indication of which way the wind is blowing inside Iraq, the Americans’ protégé, Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi, leapt agilely from the Pentagon gravy train onto the Sistani bandwagon when he told a think tank in Washington that indirect elections were a “sure-fire way to have instability” and that “direct elections are possible. Seek to make them possible and they will be possible.”
Caught squarely between the 30 June deadline for transferring sovereignty – a deadline imposed by American rather than Iraqi political realities – and the ayatollah’s demand for elections, the Americans must have been relieved when UN Secretary General Kofi Annan announced on 27 January that he would agree to their request that he should send a UN mission to Iraq to ascertain whether it would be possible to hold elections in the time available. (The one immutable part of the 15 November agreement appears to be the 30 June deadline. Everything else is negotiable.) Mr Annan said that the IGC and the CPA have “asked me to send a technical mission to Iraq to establish whether elections for a transitional assembly can be held before the transfer of sovereignty on 30 June, and if not, what alternative arrangement would be acceptable...I have concluded that the UN can play a constructive role in helping to break the current impasse. Therefore, once I am satisfied that the CPA will provide adequate security arrangements, I will send a mission to Iraq in response to the requests that I received. The mission will ascertain the views of a broad spectrum of Iraqi society in the search for alternatives that might be developed to move forward to the formation of a provisional government.” As for what the mission might recommend, “I have made clear that in my own view there is no single ‘right way.’ I strongly hold to the idea that the most sustainable way forward would be one that came from the Iraqis themselves.” However, the next day he warned that if no agreement can be reached on a mechanism for setting up a provisional government, “I’m very much worried that there will be a continuance of division and conflict.”
A Three-Man Presidency?
Mr Annan’s repeated references to “alternatives” suggests that at the moment he does not think that direct elections are particularly desirable or feasible. Nor does one influential UN adviser, former Algerian foreign minister Lakhdar Ibrahimi, who said on 27 January that “we’ve got to make sure that elections come in the right sequence for them to do the maximum good. If you get your priorities wrong” – and the Algerians are certainly qualified to comment on elections going wrong – “elections are a very divisive process…and in a country that is not stable enough to take those heated debates and even worse, one has to be certain that it will not do more harm than good.” One of the alternatives to elections under consideration, according to the current leader of the IGC, Adnan Pachachi, is for the transitional assembly to appoint a three-man presidency for the 18 months between the transfer of sovereignty and the direct election of an Iraqi government by the end of 2005. Mr Pachachi said on 28 January that “as regards the mechanism of power, the legislative body will elect a presidential body for the state. What’s being considered is a presidential body of three members. This presidential body will retain power. It will not be a façade or symbolic.” Mr Pachachi added that the powers of such a presidency – which would presumably be composed of one Shi'a, one Sunni and one Kurd – would be spelled out in the fundamental law (or provisional constitution) which the IGC is due to draft before the end of February, so it would probably be premature to dismiss the idea out of hand. But it is very much open to doubt whether it will prove acceptable to Iraq’s Shi'as, who seem determined not to miss the chance to translate their numerical superiority into political ascendancy as soon as possible.
Charles Snow