Final Tally Shows Iraqi Voters Approved New Constitution
By EDWARD WONG
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 25 - Iraqi electoral officials announced today that voters had ratified a new constitution, enshrining a legal foundation for the future governance of the country and paving the way for full-term elections in December.
The electoral commission said that the constitution had gained the support of 79 of the people who voted in the Oct. 15 referendum. But they also acknowledged that the document had nearly been defeated through a strong effort by Sunni Arab opponents, who mustered two-thirds majorities in opposition in two provinces, one shy of the three that were required to reject the charter.
The overall vote was sharply divided along ethnic and sectarian lines: the long-persecuted Shiites and Kurds, who make up about 80 percent of the population, generally supported the document.
Those contrasting views on the constitution show that while the Sunni Arabs now appear willing to take part in the political process, including in the coming December elections, they remain hostile to Shiite and Kurdish rule. In fact, Sunni politicians say they intend to run in the elections in order to try to push through sweeping amendments to the constitution in the future Parliament, amendments certain to be bitterly opposed by the Shiites and Kurds.
In addition, the steady rise in the number of Sunni-led attacks over the last two-and-a-half years, including spectacular ones such as the bomb blasts on Monday outside two hotels in downtown Baghdad, raises questions about whether passage of the constitution, like other landmarks in the political process, will have any significant impact on the guerilla war.
The document's approval "will convince many Iraqis who said 'no' to this constitution that the overwhelming majority of Iraqis respect it," said Hussain al-Shahristani, a deputy speaker of Parliament and a conservative Shiite politician. "However, there will always be terrorists linked to the previous regime or international terrorists who come from the outside who will refuse to accept this constitution."
Statistics released by the electoral commission today showed that Sunni Arabs rallied to try to defeat the constitution. According to the electoral law, if two-thirds of voters in three of Iraq's 18 provinces had rejected the document, the constitution would not have passed.
On Monday, electoral officials said that two Sunni-dominated provinces - Anbar and Salahuddin - had overwhelmingly voted "no;" that left Nineveh, a majority Sunni province where the vote tallies where being audited until today.
Officials said this afternoon that 55 percent of the voters in Nineveh had rejected the constitution, 11 points short of the two-thirds threshold. If 83,283 of the 322,869 people who had voted "yes" there had voted "no" instead, the constitution would have been defeated. In other words, like the past two presidential elections in the United States, the vote in Iraq came down to a small group of swing voters - 0.85 percent of the total turnout - in one particular area of the country.
The mixed Sunni-Shiite province of Diyala almost proved to be decisive, too. There, 51 percent of voters supported the constitution. If 85,544 of those had voted "no," the document would not have passed.
The Iraqi electoral commission, at the suggestion of United Nations advisers, had also audited a sampling of provinces in which more than 90 percent of voters had approved the constitution. Officials said today that they had found no evidence of voter fraud in those provinces, which were Basra and Babil, dominated by Shiites, and Erbil, a Kurdish province in the north. The officials said it was standard practice to scrutinize vote tallies when numbers are so heavily skewed.
Turnout was high in the northern and eastern parts of the Sunni Triangle, a marked changed from last January, when Sunni Arabs largely boycotted elections for a transitional government. Their participation in the referendum has been hailed by American officials as a sign that people opposed to the American enterprise here, including insurgents, may be assuaged through the political process.
But empirical data suggest that that may be a false hope. Recent statistics from the American military show that the number of attacks per week has risen gradually since the toppling of Saddam Hussein, despite the transfer of sovereignty in mid-2004 and the elections in January 2005, major political events partly aimed at dampening the insurgency.
In February and March 2004, the American military counted just under 200 attacks per week on average. A year later, that number had risen to about 400. In late September, the average was nearly 600, and it spiked to 723 the first week of October.
The American military said today that two more Marines were killed in a roadside bomb attack last Friday in western Iraq. At least 1,999 American troops have now died in the war since the American-led invasion in March 2003.
Two suicide car bombs exploded today in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya, killing at least 12 people, The Associated Press reported. A car bomb in the oil city of Kirkuk killed at least three Iraqi soldiers and wounded three others, and a roadside bomb south of Baghdad killed at least three more Iraqi soldiers. In Baghdad, a car bomb killed a civilian and wounded five others; gunmen shot dead three policemen in two separate attacks.
The group led by the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi posted an Internet message today taking responsibility for the bombings in Sulaimaniya and for the Monday bombings at the Palestine and Sheraton Hotels in Baghdad, which killed at least six people.
The ceaseless violence - occurring despite the onward march of a democratic process - has spurred some American commanders to acknowledge that there may not be an easy political solution to this war, and that people in the United States may have to brace themselves for a protracted struggle that will continue well after the December elections and the installation of a full-term government.
The political process may "push some of the fence-sitters off," said Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a spokesman for the American command. But he added, with a caution now deeply ingrained in the forecasts American generals make on the war, that Americans are an impatient people, and that commanders here cannot promise them a quick outcome.
"Historically, successful counterinsurgency operations take nine years," he said. "We are a nation that wants to rush a solution, but you don't solve a problem like this overnight. This war has to be won on the battlefield, and the people who are going to have to do that are the people of Iraq."
It appears more and more likely that hard-line Sunni Arabs are taking part in politics not to reach compromises on unified rule with the other factions in Iraq, but to open up an arena outside of the military one in which they can try and assert dominance. In other words, they are ready to expand the war to the political front.
"I think we must be interested in the next elections, because we can change the constitution through the next assembly," said Fakhri al-Qaisi, a dentist and senior official in the National Dialogue Council, a conservative Sunni group. "The Sunni Arabs want to get more power back."
Today, the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni group that had supported the constitution, said in a statement that Sunni Arabs would try to alter the document in the next Parliament. The group also contended that voter fraud had occurred in the critical "swing" province of Nineveh, and that the constitution as it stands is illegitimate. This continuing refusal to accept the outcome of any stage of the political process is emblematic of the Sunni Arab attitude as a whole, and it shows no signs of abating.
The governor of Sunni-dominated Salahuddin Province, Hamid Hamood al-Qaisi, sent a message to the Iraqi national government today demanding at least 12 seats for Salahuddin in the new Parliament, 4 more than the number allotted.
To reach compromise on this constitution, Iraqi politicians put off addressing many critical issues, leaving those up to the next Parliament. They include the division of oil resources and the exact process by which regions will be able to declare autonomy from the central government. The minority Sunni Arabs, who generally prospered under the rule of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Arab himself, fear that Shiites and Kurds will try to enshrine language allowing them to form oil-rich independent states within Iraq, and so are girding for battle in the new Parliament.
The electoral commission has said political groups intending to take part in the December elections must register by Friday. Parties have been jockeying furiously to form to form coalitions and put together slates of candidates. The religious Shiite parties are negotiating to see whether they will run as one bloc, as last in last January's elections.
Several Shiite officials said today that the major religious parties were trying to paper over their differences and stick together, while some independent politicians, including Ahmad Chalabi, the former exile who was once close to Washington, were leaning toward breaking away and forming their own coalitions. |
