Iraq national conference on brink of collapse
Protestors accuse political bigwigs of have already drawn up their lists for selecting Iraq's national council.
By Sam Dagher - BAGHDAD
2004 -08-17
Furious national conference delegates accused the main political parties of hijacking a scheduled vote Tuesday for a new interim legislature for Iraq, saying most members were chosen long ago in secret.
Several hundred delegates threatened to quit the conference on its last day unless the voting mechanism was changed, before Fuad Maasum, head of the event's preparatory committee, agreed to put the voting procedure itself to a vote.
"The mainstream political parties have dominated the conference and have already drawn up their lists for selecting the national council," said Aziz al-Yasseri, from the broad coalition National Democratic Movement.
Nineteen of the 100 seats on the council have already been handed to members of the defunct governing council, created by the US-led occupation shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 that included many exiled regime opponents.
According to conference rules, delegates of different leanings - Islamists, secular, Kurdish, Arab or otherwise - are supposed to draw up lists for the remaining 81 seats and submit them to an open vote.
The one gaining a 51 -percent majority would be the winning list.
"We refuse this and if this is not dealt with today then the whole conference will fall apart and I will walk out, with hundreds with me," added the Shiite Muslim from Baghdad, himself nominated for the council.
He lashed out at the mainstream Shiite parties, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and Dawa, the prime minister's Iraqi National Accord, the two largest Kurdish parties and the communists as the main culprits.
Yasseri accused them of hooking up with "fly-by-night political parties" and pressuring those from civil organisations and independent delegates to join them on the closed lists that were to be voted on.
He had raised his concerns about securing a more inclusive way of voting with UN special envoy to Iraq, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi.
"Leaving it to a truly open vote may bring in people that would threaten the strategic plan that has already been charted for Iraq," a senior delegate on the preparatory committee for the three-day conference has said.
All voting lists should more or less conform to previous agreements dating back to 1991 among Iraq's then exiled opposition parties, as ethnic and religious groups plotted to overthrow Saddam's Sunni Muslim dominated regime, a Sunni party official said.
"For example Shiites must get 52 percent of all 100seats or Islamists get 33 percent and so on and so forth" said Dia al-Shukurji of the Dawa party.
Ismail Zayer, editor of a leading Baghdad daily who has formed an independent coalition, confirmed that the 81 seats up for the vote would be distributed among 21 party members, 21 provincial leaders, 11minorities, 10 tribal figures, 10 civil society organisations and eight independents.
"The big government parties... are saying we need a parliament working in harmony with the government. We don't like that. Since when was a parliament working in harmony with a government? We would like a government under the control of parliament, and not the other way round," he said.
"These big government parties are sitting in the back rooms, dividing the cake amongst themselves and then they will go on stage and say these are our lists take it or leave it. This is undemocratic," he added.
Women have been already granted 25 percent of council seats, but Zayer said some of the lists, drawn up in secret weeks before the conference, include only 12 women not the required 22.
"The big challenge now is to change the mechanism of the vote," he said, calling for names to be chalked up on a board rather than a closed poll.
"The average Iraqi must feel that this is truly an opportunity for him or her to enter political life," said former oil minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum.
The idea of the conference was dreamt up under the previous US-led administration with UN blessing and enshrined in the country's interim laws, meant as a blueprint for elections and the drafting of a constitution in 2005.
middle-east-online.com |
