Iraqi constitution draft faces a hazy prospect

After repeated postponements, the final edition of the constitution draft submitted by the constitution drafting committee was read out by the transitional parliament on August 28. Then President Jalal Talabani announced that a referendum on the constitution would be held before October 15. Because the enactment of constitution is controlled by Shiites and Kurds, the delayed coming constitution draft is a product of the compromise between the two factions and not the consensus reached among the three major groups, therefore it met with the strong opposition from Sunnis -- an important party of the "tripartite" balance of forces in the Iraqi political circles, leading to a Iraqi situation full of variables and a bleak prospect.

Constitution is the fundamental law of a country, the formulation of a constitution means drawing up a "blueprint of the state". For the war-torn Iraq, the formulation of constitution is a key link in political reconstruction, its aim is to bring the country to stability at an early date, realize reconciliation of the nation, and to magnanimity and coexistence of religions.

However, prompted continuously by the United States, the Iraqi constitution draft, emerged two weeks later than the "expected date", failed to satisfy the political demand of the Sunnis on such questions as the country's system of government, the nature of state, the status of the Baath Arab Socialist Party and the distribution of resources. The aforesaid questions are sensitive and hard to tackle, of which the system of government can be termed as "the mother of knotty problem". The Sunnis agree to maintain the prewar state in northern Kurdish regions and institute "federal" autonomy there, but they firmly oppose institution of a "federal system" in the central and southern Shiite regions, demanding that such words as "federal system" must be thoroughly deleted from the constitution draft. But in the final edition, the Shiites and Kurds refuse to delete the "federal system" provisions, they only agree to leave the concrete connotations relating to the "federal system" and the introduction of mechanisms to be delineated by the new parliament to be born after the general election at the end of the year.

With regard to this constitution draft that people doubt whether it is a draft of Iraq or of the United States, the three parties of the Iraqi Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds all have the "power of life and death" in their hands. According to the stipulations of Iraq's interim constitution, if the draft is vetoed by over two-thirds of the voters in three of the 18 provinces where referendum is held, then this feeble constitutional draft will come to a premature end. Currently, the Sunni Arabs make up the majority at least in three provinces. So long as they unanimously say "No", they are fully capable of stopping the adoption of the new constitution. Of course, the Sunnis and even the Shiites are not unanimous within themselves, many people take different attitudes. Whether or not the Iraqi constitution can pass will finally be determined by the number of Sunnis and Shiites who vote against it in the referendum.

Referendum will be a perilous political path in Iraq. If the constitution is voted down, the transitional Iraqi parliament will be dissolved and then the general election will be restarted. The Iraqi political environment will retrogress to the state before the general election in January this year, all efforts made since the beginning of the year will be cast to the wind. By the time, various factions will have to "reshuffle the cards" in the game, and Iraq will unavoidably be thrown into a more chaotic situation. For the United States that finds it hard to extricate itself from the quagmire of the Iraq war, its introduction of "democracy" in Iraq seems to have become the only convincing "reason" for it to start war in Iraq. Because mid-term election will be held next year in the United States, the Republican government is in urgent need to strive for votes on the Iraq issue, and it expects that enactment of an official constitution can help fundamentally weaken anti-American militants and create conditions for reducing station troops. If the question concerning Iraqi constitution gets stuck, it would undoubtedly mean a heavy blow to the United States.

Even if the Iraqi constitution draft can be passed in referendum, it doesn't mean that Iraq's future political reconstruction will embark on a smooth path. On the contrary, along with implementation of a "federal system", the struggle among various Iraqi parties on such key issues as the distribution of power and interest will become fiercer, and even the outbreak of a civil war cannot be ruled out. In that case, Iraq will really face the danger of secession.

This article by Liu Shuiming, senior editor of People's Daily Overseas Edition, is carried on the front page of this newspaper on August 31 and translated by People's Daily Online