Mullings: An American Cyber-column By Rich Galen

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Success in Iraq's Elections

Rich Galen

Friday January 28, 2005

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Armstrong Williams Warning:

The public affairs firm with which I am now affiliated, Manning, Selvage & Lee, has a client named Spirit of America. Spirit of America is (and has been) actively working to promote the Iraqi elections both in Iraq and in the United States.

Dear Mr. Mullings:

We've been meaning to ask you about that. Armstrong Williams was paid $240,000 to promote the Department of Education's "No Child Left Behind" program, which he did not disclose. Have you ever been paid to promote a position and written about it without telling us?

Signed,
The Seven Liberal Mullings Readers Looking for Something to Complain About

Nah. But I suspect that may have as much to do with the fact that no one has ever offered me a quarter of a mil as it does my high ethical standards.

The big question being asked around Washington in the final days before the elections in Iraq is: What will constitute success?

When I am asked that question I remind reporters of the game which is typically played in the New Hampshire primary every four years. The leading campaign tries to downplay the amount by which it really hopes to win: "We think we're going to win by, maybe a couple of percentage points." When they win by the five percentage points they knew they would all along, they claim the BIG SURPRISE on election night.

The other campaigns want to set the bar as low as possible: "If we get anything over 17 votes we think we'll be doing fine," so when they get 34 votes - double what they said they were hoping for - they can claim a SURGE OF SUPPORT moving into South Carolina or where ever.

The turnout in the US election for President this past November was 60.7 percent of registered voters according to the Center for the Study of the American Electorate. That was the highest since 1968 when the election between Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey attracted 61.9%.

Assuming State Department spokesman Richard Boucher is correct, there are some 15 million registered voters in Iraq. So, if anything in the area of 9 million Iraqis vote (60% of 15 million) then Iraqis will have voted in the same ratio as Americans.

Shiite Muslims who represent about 60% of the Iraqi population will, as is proper, dominate the 275-member Transitional National Assembly when this process is complete.

But Sunnis - who comprise approximately 20 percent of the population - have claimed they will not participate at all. Sunni Muslims have controlled Iraqi society for many, many decades even though they are in the minority. The theory goes like this: If the Sunnis don't participate in the election they will be able to claim the results are not legitimate because they will not be properly represented in the Assembly.

Just to finish this eye-glazing part, Kurds (who live largely in the north of Iraq) make up about 17% of the population.

It is not outside the realm of possibility that the Assembly, in order to legitimize its makeup, will appoint enough Sunnis to provide them with 55 seats which would represent their proportion of the population.

The Transitional Assembly will have two main tasks: Choose the interim leadership - including the Prime Minister - and draft a formal constitution which is to be presented to the Iraqi people by next October. Assuming that is approved, the Iraqis will then vote for a permanent government sometime in late 2005 or early 2006.

In US history, the Articles of Confederation were replaced by the Constitution which took effect on March 4, 1789 having been discussed, debated, drafted, submitted and ratified in a process which had begun in May, 1787.

The business of creating a new government has never been quick or easy.

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A link to the BBC's thumbnail sketch of Iraq; a time-line of the Constitutional Congress; a nice Mullfoto of the Capitol; and the Catchy Caption of the Day.

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