Changing the rules twice

l THE Iraqi people are due to vote in the referendum on their constitution at the end of next week. The rules determining the outcome of this referendum were set more than a year ago but last Sunday the dominant Shiites and Kurds in the National Assembly decided to change them in order to remove any risk that the result might be a rejection of the constitution. The election experts of the United Nations who have been oveseeing arrangements for the referendum immediately drew attention to this unacceptable shifting of the goal posts and yesterday the National Assembly, by 119 to 28 votes, reversed the decision it had taken only three days previously. This confused behaviour of the members of the National Assembly does not augur well for the development of a functioning democracy in Iraq but it is easy to see why the Shiites and Kurds, who support the constitution, were panicked into trying to change the rules. The constitution would be defeated if two-thirds of the votes in three provinces were to reject it; this could happen if voters in the provinces populated by Sunni Arabs were to turn out in force and vote No, as they might well do so given the leaders' dissatisfaction with many provisions of the constitution. The sleight of hand devised by the Shiites and Kurds to avoid this happening was to say that the two-thirds proportion referred to the number of registered voters, whether or not they actually voted, rather than to the number of those who turned up at the polling stations. Since there is considerable uncertainty about whether the Sunnis will choose to vote or will abstain as they did at the Assembly elections in January, the change almost certainly guaranteed that the constitution would be approved next week. Now the outcome is less easy to predict although the odds are probably in favour of approval of the constitution.
The United States and Britain will certainly be hoping that this is what happens because it would lead to parliamentary elections at the turn of the year which could be cited as evidence that democracy is taking root in Iraq. A rejection of the constitution would lead to a delay of a year or so before parliamentary elections could be held.
By Ray Fleming.