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Iraq: Give democracy a real
chance
By Akhilesh Upadhyay
NEW YORK - Instead of pushing war as the only
option to regime change in Iraq, the United States and
the international community should immediately call on
Iraqis to form a broad-based transitional government in
exile, then demand that President Saddam Hussein step
down, suggests a think tank in New York.
Such a
move is not without precedent. Starting in 2000, the
United Nations brought together thousands of citizens of
Somalia in neighboring Djibouti to elect a 245-member
parliament and a president, who was later welcomed in
Mogadishu by tens of thousands of Somalis.
A
similar process for Iraqi would carry legitimacy, unlike
the proposed US-led military intervention, argues the
World Citizen Foundation. A transitional government
would also engage the Iraqi people in a democratic
process well before the fall of the Saddam regime, while
the dictator's ouster through military intervention
would in no way guarantee popular participation, it
adds.
Foundation president Troy Davis, who has
been furiously lobbying diplomatic communities and world
leaders for the "preemptive democracy" plan,
acknowledges that war could only be weeks away but
believes there is enough time for his the idea to catch
on.
"It needs just one country to support the
idea publicly," he says, or the mass media to grab hold
of the proposal. "If [actor] Sean Penn hears about it,
or any celebrity, then that will do it," he adds. Should
the idea capture public imagination, it would be very
difficult for US President George W Bush to dismiss,
adds Davis. "We are more 'Bush-ite' than Bush. He says,
'I want to create democracy in Iraq' but the way he is
doing it is not democratic."
The foundation plan
would work in three steps. First, a
constitutional convention open to all Iraqi groups and
the world media would be formed in exile, much like the
Djibouti peace initiative. Second, the
newly-created constitutional assembly would form a
provisional government of Iraq and "order" Saddam to
step down. The international community could then throw
its weight behind the new government by giving the
provisional government Iraq's seat in all international
bodies, publicly siding with this more legitimate
authority. And thirdly, a free and fair election
for a more representative government could be held.
According to Davis, who calls the foundation a
"democracy engineer", within a matter of months
preemptive democracy could remove what is today Saddam's
greatest strength: his perceived legitimacy as the head
of a sovereign nation, which also explains the
reluctance of much of the world to create the dangerous
precedent of a pre-emptive military attack, even against
a regime that most countries abhor.
In recent
weeks, Davis has tried to sell the idea to diplomats at
United Nations headquarters, including those from large
European democracies, who favor a democratic regime
change that would avoid war. He is disheartened by their
reaction. "Diplomats know about this idea but they don't
have the courage to say 'Here's an idea. Let's talk
about it'," says Davis. But some experts believe that
preemptive democracy is compatible with the fundamental
principles of the world community, including the US, and
as long as it was carried out openly and transparently
would turn public opinion - including that of the Arab
world - against Saddam.
Buoyed by support from
such world powers as China, Russia and the United
States, and armed with a UN Security Council mandate,
Djibouti, in 2000, started a grass-roots process to form
a Somali government in exile. In a transparent election,
thousands of Somali delegates voted for parliament, a
move that received immediate support from a number of
African and Middle Eastern countries, besides France,
Italy and the US.
Taking lessons from that
process, the Security Council should immediately pass a
resolution to pave the way for a transitional Iraqi
government, says John W McDonald a conflict specialist
at the Washington-based Institute for Multi-Track
Diplomacy. "The UN was deeply involved in Djibouti.
Time's very short but here's a mechanism that's been
successfully tried before."
Davis told IPS that
UN assistant secretary general for political affairs,
Danilo Turk, acknowledged in a private conversation that
that the idea was "worth trying". The official
apparently also told him that the world body had no
mandate to initiate regime change, but that the UN might
get involved at a later date if Iraqis themselves
initiated the process. "It is important that the process
be as representative as possible," Davis quotes Turk as
saying.
The foundation believes that the
international community could in a matter of weeks help
Iraqis convene a constitutional assembly and produce a
democratic constitution and a new government. The fact
that drafts for such a constitution already exist, and
that the country's constitution of 1925 was never
formally repealed would shorten the process, it adds.
"A broad-based transitional administration made
up of Iraqis or a government-in-exile would constitute a
powerful alternative to the current regime in Iraq,"
says Necla Tschirgi of the New York-based International
Peace Academy. But she believes that the UN is not the
right vehicle for the initiative.
What is
required, according to Tschirgi, is a global mass
movement that, while working to stop the march to war,
would pressure the Iraqi regime to step down in order to
spare the country from war, she says. "Unfortunately,
the clock is ticking very fast and the war machine is
steadily moving on."
Davis adds that the plan
provides a viable alternative to countries like France
and Germany who are desperate to avoid war. "They could
thumb their noses at the Bush administration [saying],
'Look, you say you want to bring democracy to Iraq. We
are bringing democracy to Iraq'."
He says that
the foundation has invited former world leaders Jimmy
Carter, Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel and Mikhail
Gorbachev to join the Iraq peace process as independent
advisors. Former UN human rights chief Mary Robinson is
among others invited on the panel.
(Inter Press
Service)
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