Iraq Constitution Passes
By Captain Ed on War on Terror
The Iraqi people select their constitution via direct democracy -- the first Arabic people to do so in a free and fair election:
Iraq's landmark constitution was adopted by a majority of voters during the country's Oct. 15 referendum, as Sunni Arab opponents failed to muster enough support to defeat it, election officials said Tuesday.
Results released by the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq showed that Sunni Arabs, who had sharply opposed the draft document, failed to produce the two-thirds ``no'' vote they would have needed in at least three of Iraq's 18 provinces to defeat it.
Nationwide, 78.59 percent voted for the charter while 21.41 percent voted against, the commission said. The charter required a simple majority nationwide with the provision that if two-thirds of the voters in any three provinces rejected it, the constitution would be defeated.
More Iraqis voted in this second election since the fall of Saddam than did so in the first, and thanks to the controversial nature of the election, the electorate was more diverse -- and yet almost 80% of Iraqis approved the final version of their new constitution. In the end, only three provinces rejected it, with only two of them reaching the required two-thirds vote for official repudiation.
And in the end, an armed insurgency ended up watching helplessly as millions of Iraqis repudiated them and marched bravely to the polling stations to take ownership of their own government. That is the largest victory of all, and the kind that will win the war on terror in the long run. |
