VOL. XLVII
No 09
01
The Political Scene (1 March 2004)
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has reported to the Security Council that it would not be advisable to hold elections in Iraq before the 30 June deadline for the handover of sovereignty – and Ayatollah 'Ali al-Sistani has indicated that he is prepared to go along with this recommendation, but only until the end of the year. The UN report also rejects caucuses as a means of selecting an interim government and the signature of an agreement on security before there is an elected government. In Iran the conservatives have come out on top in parliamentary elections.
Annan Reports To Security Council On Elections
As expected, when he presented his formal report to the Security Council on 23 February, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan recommended against trying to hold elections in Iraq before the 30 June deadline for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to hand sovereignty back to the Iraqis. “After more than three decades of despotic rule, without the basic elements of the rule of law, a ruined economy, a devastated country, the collapse of state institutions, low political will for reconciliation and distrust among some Iraqis,” Mr Annan noted, “conditions in Iraq are daunting,” and it would be “extremely difficult and perhaps even hazardous” to hold general elections by 30 June. However, “if the work was started immediately, and the required political consensus was reached fairly rapidly, it would be possible to hold elections by the end of 2004,” although it would probably take until the end of May to make preparations and then a minimum of eight months to organize elections. Moreover, security would have to be “substantially improved to guarantee the integrity of the electoral operations and the credibility of the process.”
The UN has thus given the Americans arguments to counter Shi'a leader Ayatollah 'Ali al-Sistani’s demand for an elected government by 30 June, but Mr Annan’s report is by no means an open-ended endorsement of the procedure for reconstituting the Iraqi state in the 15 November agreement between the CPA and the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC). Inter alia, this envisaged a “fundamental law” (i.e. transitional constitution) to be drafted by the IGC by 28 February (the signatories evidently forgot that 2004 is a leap year); a transitional assembly chosen by “caucuses” by the end of May; elections for a constitutional convention in March 2005 followed by a referendum; and elections for a government by the end of 2005. The UN report proposes to streamline and accelerate this process: a “single elected assembly should be chosen through elections held by the end of 2004 or shortly thereafter, with the dual functions of drafting the country’s constitution and at the same time acting as the principal law-making body or legislature.” In the interim, the government which is to take power on 30 June should be determined not by the caucus system – which “does not appear to enjoy sufficient support amongst Iraqis to be a viable option any longer” – but through consensus, “building on discussions that have taken place to date.”
Ayatollah Sistani for his part has accepted the UN’s findings, but evidently remains deeply suspicious of American intentions, since he repeated on 26 February that the Marjaiya (Shi'a religious leadership) “wants clear guarantees through a resolution by the UN Security Council on the organization of elections by the end of 2004, as specified by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan” in order to “assure the Iraqi people that this issue will not be delayed again.” He also reiterated his insistence that the interim government should be a caretaker administration only, saying “the Marjaiya wants the body that will receive power at the end of June to have extended powers in order to prepare transparent and free elections, but also urges it to run the country without taking important decisions.”
Security Arrangements Will Have to Wait
The UN report unceremoniously jettisons one of the main pillars of the of the 15 November agreement, the idea of caucuses to choose a transitional assembly to choose a transitional government, and two other major features of the agreement now appear to be in doubt as well. It will very shortly become evident whether the IGC – where there are reportedly differences over Kurdish demands for autonomy, the status of women and the role of Islam – will come up with a fundamental law (or transitional constitution) by the 28 February deadline. And the proposal that the CPA should negotiate a security agreement providing a legal basis for the US presence in Iraq by the end of March (ie with the IGC) now appears to have run out of steam, not least because Mr Annan argued in his report that such an agreement could only be signed by an elected government, since “anything else would be illegitimate and would offer the impression that the process by which security agreements were reached was neither transparent nor accountable.” Members of the IGC are evidently having second thoughts about this arrangement as well, with former foreign minister Adnan Pachachi saying on 23 February that “I don’t think there is time for that. It’s preferable really that they be concluded by a government which has total sovereignty and power, rather than by a government which is not sufficiently representative.” Faced with growing opposition to what always looked like an attempt to pull a fast one, CPA spokesman Dan Senor beat a retreat on 25 February, saying “when we negotiated the November 15 political agreement with the IGC, they obviously felt strongly about establishing some sort of agreement by the end of March that would address the role of US forces post-June 30. They are now saying…they don’t think they should do it before the end of March; in fact they shouldn’t do it before the end of June, they should do it once there’s a sovereign Iraq.” That leaves it unclear whether the security agreement will be signed with the caretaker government that takes office on 30 June or whether it will have to wait until elections are held (as Ayatollah Sistani seems likely to insist). What is clear is that there is very little left of the 15 November agreement except the 30 June date for the return of sovereignty to the Iraqis – although what kind of sovereignty and to which Iraqis is now uncertain.
Conservatives Win Iranian Election
Since the conservative Guardians Council disqualified some 3,600 mainly reformist candidates (83 of them sitting members of the 290-member Majlis), it was hardly surprising that the voter turnout in Iran’s 20 February parliamentary elections was the lowest in the history of the Islamic Republic at 51% - down from 66% in the 2000 election – or that the conservatives have replaced reformists as the majority in the new Majlis. With 58 seats still to be decided in run-offs, the seat count was conservatives 156, reformists 39 and independents 31 (with 5 seats reserved for religious minorities and the city of Bam unrepresented). Whether this will make much practical difference is open to question, since reformist legislation has in the past almost invariably been blocked by the Guardians Council. But the election came in for criticism from the EU – whose foreign ministers on 24 February expressed “deep regret and disappointment that large numbers of candidates were prevented from standing…making a genuine democratic choice by the Iranian people impossible” – and, of course, in Washington, where President Bush said that “I join many in Iran and around the world in condemning the Iranian regime’s efforts to stifle freedom of speech in the run-up to the election. Such measures undermine the rule of law and are clear attempts to deny the Iranian people’s desire to freely choose their leaders.” This in turn elicited a sharp response from Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi, who said on the same day that “this interventionism and contradictory remarks…are totally unacceptable.”
Charles Snow