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Wednesday, February 02, 20051107359100
No Ratification Needed?
"Religious Shiites claim Victory," by Juan Cole, Informed Consent, http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/religious-shiites-claim-victory-abdul.html, 2 February 2005.
Planet Iraq, destroyed by the leviathan meteor of the United States Military, reforms around its strongest centers of gravity.
Juan Cole gives preliminary election returns from Iraq
The UIA spokesmen are saying in some provinces they got 90 percent of the vote, and believe that they will gain about half the seats in the 275-member parliament, or 138. They would have needed two-thirds, or 182 seats, to dispense with any coalition partner inside parliament in forming the next government.
The Kurds believe that they actually did better than did the list of interim prime minister Iyad Allawi, and will garner about 65 seats, or nearly a quarter. Al-Hayat reported that interim Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd, even predicted that the Kurds would take as many as 75 seats. "This," he said, "is what we always wanted." The Kurds have long been marginalized in Iraqi politics.
This is the best possible outcome.
A Kurdish-UIA alliance would bring about 216 seats, giving it 78.5% of all seats. This is enough towrite a constitution without ratification by Sunni provinces. If the Kurds and UIA can agree on devolved status for Kurdistan, there is no reason they cannot ram through their reforms. The Kurds would vote for any UIA initiatives on Arab Iraq, while the UIA would support any Kurdish moves for autonomy.
If these election results hold and the Kurds and UIA ally as expected, it lays the foundation for a future worth creating. With Kurdish-UIA control of the Assembly..
- Kurdistan becomes a liberal democracy in the Middle East, showing Turkish Kurds independence can be won in a democratic setting, giving Turkey another sane neighbor (after Georgia's Rose Revolution)
- The Shia Sphere becomes home to internal political and theological debate, and exerts a gravitational pull to detatch the Eastern Province from Saudi Arabia
- Making the Sunni Arab lands in Iraq the best model of how not to behave since Monty Python's How Not To Be Seen
May Shia Iraq give oppressed Arabs everywhere hope. May free Kurdistan pave the way for freedom and democracy. And may the Sunni lands be a warning to any who launch terrorist attacks upon a free Republic.
09:45 Posted by Dan tdaxp in Iraq | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: constitutions, uia