Iraq: Alarming call

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki stunned many in Iraq when he called this week for majority rule and repeated his preference for the presidential system instead of the parliamentary one, in place since 2005 when a new constitution was endorsed in a public referendum. In an address to a gathering of a Sunni tribal chieftains Saturday, Al-Maliki said "sectarian sharing" of power is a "catastrophe".

Ethnic and religious "preferences" should be eliminated and instead be replaced by a "majority rule" system according to "electoral results". Al-Maliki noted that establishing consensus on major decisions among Iraq's religious, ethnic and sectarian communities was necessary after 2003 to bring stability to a country torn apart by the war, but is no longer needed.

This call for a reduction in power-sharing is his latest in a series of proposals to centralise power in Iraq especially decision-making processes on national issues. Though the Shia prime minister did not mention Kurds and Sunnis, he was apparently referring to the perception that requiring a consensus has given the two minorities a greater political voice than they deserve based on the size of their overall population and their share in the 275-seat parliament.

After the 2003 US invasion and the overthrow of the regime of Saddam Hussein, American experts who participated in drafting the new constitution suggested that the new political system should be based on "consensus democracy" meaning that that process of legislation and the decision-making structure should be based on as broad a range of opinions as possible, as opposed to systems where minority opinions can potentially be ignored by vote- winning majorities.

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http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/949/re9.htm