Iraqis impatient for promised democracy

CPA administrator Paul Bremer, the top US civilian official in Iraq, says elections in Iraq are technically impossible for the time being. "There is no electoral law, there is no political parties law, there are no electoral boundaries, there has been no census for almost 20 years," he argued in an interview in his high-ceilinged office in Baghdad's Republican Palace, a bastion of the old regime. "The Governing Council was a product of very broad consultations with ... notables, town leaders, professionals, men and women from all over the country," he says, adding that a committee appointed by the Governing Council to devise a mechanism for writing the constitution may recommend a similar approach in order to select what he terms a "constitutional conference."

Council member Mowaffak al-Rubaie says the US is pushing too fast toward a democratic system. "I personally feel the Americans are rushing us toward democracy," says Dr. Rubaie ruing the absence of a "democratic culture" in the country. Rubaie, a former spokesman for the Shiite Dawa Party who was repeatedly imprisoned by the Baath regime before going into exile in the 1990s, offers an illustration of how far many Iraqis must come to appreciate democracy. One day last month, after participating in a heated debate during a session of the newly formed Governing Council, one of Rubaie's security men approached him.

The man mentioned a Council member with whom Rubaie had disagreed openly. "Do you want us to finish him off?" the man asked his boss. Rubaie tells the story with an appalled expression. "He meant to kill him!

"We have to wean the majority of the country from this way of thinking," Rubaie concludes.

In the long term, many Iraqis worry that a failure to establish a truly representative government will make it harder for Iraq to overcome the religious and ethnic sectarianism that has bedeviled the country's rulers for decades.

Rubaie credits Bremer and his colleagues for appointing the members of the Council in a way that reflects Iraq's sectarian and ethnic diversity. "Show me one component of the Iraqi community that is not represented here," Rubaie says.

Others aren't so pleased. "You're dissecting the country," says Mudhar Showkat, a senior member of the Iraqi National Congress, a group formed in exile that has advocated speedy elections and a quick return to Iraqi sovereignty. He argues that the allocation of seats according to background sets a dangerous precedent. "You're building up something that will lead to a clash as it did in Lebanon," he warns, citing a country where complex formulas for apportioning power devolved into years of civil war.

The Governing Council has yet to make decisions that affect the day-to-day lives of most Iraqis. So far, it has concentrated on symbolic steps - such as eliminating some holidays established by the former regime - and has delayed naming ministers to head Iraq's bureaucracies. Once the Council puts Iraqis in charge of ministries, their fellow citizens may feel, albeit vicariously, that they have a greater role in government. Meanwhile, Bremer says he and other CPA officials are working to shorten the perceived distance between them and the people they are ruling. And the Council has shortened its Baghdad work week so members can spend more time talking to Iraqis around the country.

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