Shouldn't We Respect The Votes Of The Iraqi People?
Iraqis went to the polls months ago. The results of that election have been known for weeks. Yet still Iraq does not have a government.
The US is pushing the parties to form a government of national unity, going so far as to broker the negotiations. Negotiating the formation of Iraq's new government is not America's job. It's the job of the political leaders of Iraq.
Moreover, trying to form a government of national unity is problematic. A government of national unity that encompasses all the demographic and political blocs in the country, regardless of the electoral outcome, runs counter to how democracy is supposed to work.
In democracies there are winners and losers. The winners get to run the show and the losers get to be the opposition. When the next election comes around the winners have to run on their record of accomplishments and failures, and the losers get to try again. The voters then decide whether to return the government to office or throw the bums out and let the other bums be the government until the next election.
Trying to form a government of national unity that puts winners and losers in the government ignores the basic principle of a democracy that votes matter. Let's get on with it. Let the winners form the Iraqi government and let the losers oppose them in parliament.
-tdr
Technorati: Iraq.
Labels: War On Islamism
posted by tdr at 7:32 PM
1 Comments:
I don't view the creation of a "government of national unity" as undemocratic, per se. It's a natural part of the coalition-building that goes on in every nation that has a multi-party system. The US is not going to change the party-based allocation of seats in parliament. We are pushing the parties to choose legislators who can work towards healing the country.
With Iraq, the US is pushing very hard to forge a "grand coalition" between the ethnic, tribal and religious factions. While this is extremely important in Iraq, it's not too far off from what just happened in Germany, where Angela Merkel's conservative block had to cut deals with the Greens and Social Democrats just to form a governing coalition.
The only way I can see peace coming about in Iraq is the sacking of PM Ibrahim al Jafaari and Interior Minister Bayan Jabr. Moqtada al Sadr is destabilizing Iraq by using those two clowns like puppets, while quietly infiltrating the police forces with his militia and conducting revenge killings. The Sunnis and Kurds have good reason to balk at the retention of these two officials. Any "government of national unity" cannot include any of al Sadr's allies in meaningful positions.
9:24 PM
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