By Logan Barclift
In a move to take away the Sunni Arab minority’s ability to block the new constitution by suppressing turnout, the Iraqi parliament has passed a law that two-thirds of registered voters must vote to reject the constitution in a province for that province to be counted as a no vote on the constitution. The constitution will be rejected if three provinces reject it by having a two-thirds no vote. The right of the people to vote on the constitution is not harmed instead it is enhanced.
Article 61 Section C of the Transitional Administrative Law signed by the Iraqi Governing Council on March 8, 2004 says “The general referendum will be successful and the draft constitution ratified if a majority of the voters in Iraq approve and if two-thirds of the voters in three or more governorates do not reject it.” All the parliament has done is define the word “voters” in the section to refer to registered voters instead just those who actually cast a ballot.
Before this change the Sunnis could get there wish of a no vote in the required three provinces by ensuring that only those who are going to vote “no” did in fact go vote. This move by the parliament takes the decision away from the Sunni leaders and/or insurgents and places it where it should be, which in the hands of the people. If they had only allowed three people to vote and two voted no then those two people would decided the issue for the whole province.
Now that the incentive for the Sunnis to suppress the vote is gone, more of the Sunni population should be able to vote and use their ballots instead of bullets to affect their future. No group or faction should be able to achieve their goal by intimidating and threatening the electorate to not vote or to vote a certain way. Now that the part about not voting has been addressed there should be guarantees that the process will be fair and no one will be forced to vote a certain way against their will.
This new law will take away the need or reason for the boycott on the part of the Sunni Arabs. The United Nations has taken a shortsighted view of this law by not looking at the effect. Instead, the UN should be encouraging Sunni Arabs to vote, support the political process, and the resort to the ballot box to address their issues.
Logan Barclift is an analyst at the Institute for Gulf Affairs.
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