The Crisis of Democracy in Iraq and Iran

by Juan Cole

Released: 2 Feb 2004

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Iraq has called for free and fair elections on the basis of one person, one vote. His stance startled decision-makers in the Middle East, who faced two momentous elections in the first half of 2004, in Iran and Iraq. Sistani's position that legitimate government must reflect the will of the sovereign people echoes Enlightenment thinkers such as Rousseau and Jefferson, and promises a sea change in Middle Eastern politics.

Elected parliaments are common in the Middle East, but they often have more of the form than the substance of democracy. Contemporary Iran and Iraq, both with Shiite majorities, exemplify this problem. In Iran, the clerical Guardianship Council has excluded thousands of candidates from running, including sitting members of parliament. In Iraq, the Coalition Provisional Authority headed by Paul Bremer attempted to limit the electorate to hand-picked members of Coalition-appointed councils.

Democracy as a value is widely accepted in the Middle East, as polls show. Governing elites in the region, however, have attempted to limit the sovereignty of parliament through institutions that wield arbitrary power. The military in US allies such as Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan plays such a limiting role to one degree or another. In Iran, the hard line clerics regularly intervene to overrule the elected legislature.

In Iran, the electorate is free to vote as it pleases, but candidates themselves must be vetted by the clerical Guardianship Council. That council declared thousands of candidates ineligible to run in elections originally scheduled for late February, questioning their commitment to Islamist ideology. The ruling threw Iran's politics into chaos, with its reformist President Khatami suggesting elections would be postponed. On February 1, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Islamic revolution, some 40 percent of members of parliament angrily tendered their resignations, raising the stakes in a tense game with their hard line opponents.

The situation in Iraq is just as unsettled. Although the Bush administration touted its invasion of Iraq as the beginning of a new wave of democratization, severe questions have arisen as to its actual intentions. The US, facing a guerrilla war in the Sunni heartland, along with Kurdish agitation for greater autonomy and Shiite restiveness, discovered that it could not run Iraq by itself. It therefore needed a transitional Iraqi government with legitimacy, requiring elections.

The first instinct of the Bush administration, however, was to have an electoral college elected by members of the provincial councils and by the US-appointed Interim Governing Council. The US feared that open elections would allow extremist elements to dominate the new parliament. The Coalition-appointed councils, however, lacked local legitimacy and were widely seen as corrupt and nepotistic. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani declared that Mr. Bremer's plan "for a transitional parliament does not at all guarantee the just representation therein of the Iraqis." He demanded instead free and open elections.

Sistani's demand has shaken Washington. He also called for a United Nations commission to come to Iraq and investigate the possibility of elections, a request in which Kofi Annan and the US have acquiesced. One of his aides, Shaikh Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala'i, said that even should the UN team find that direct elections are not possible, the Iraqi Shiite clerics "will insist on a formula closer to elections than appointments."

Sistani, among the foremost legal authorities in the Muslim world, has adopted into Islamic law the principle that a government can only be legitimate if it derives from the will of the people. His stance repudiates the views of Ayatollah Khomeini, who insisted a quarter of a century ago that clerics rule and who rejected the idea of democracy because, he said, sovereignty is God's alone. Sistani's ruling is therefore an implicit challenge to the hard liners in Iran, as well as to those in the Bush administration who had hoped to control the outcome of Iraq's elections. In some ways, from Sistani's point of view, the Bush hard liners and the Iran hard liners are both attempting to undermine the sovereignty of the people.

If the United States insists on stage-managing Iraq's elections, it will miss a historic opportunity for Iraq to serve as a showcase for democracy that could contrast with Iran's legacy of authoritarianism and deadlock. Iraqis must feel that the procedures that produce their interim government, even if not perfect, are as fair and democratic as possible under the circumstances. Should the United States disappoint them, it could give democracy a bad name and hurt not only the stability of Iraq but the fortunes of reform in Iran.

Juan Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Michigan and author of "Sacred Space and Holy War."

Copyright 2004 © Agence Global
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Released: 3 Feb. 2004
Word Count: 790
Contact: Agence Global, +1.336.686.9002, henry@agenceglobal.com

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