36-member Assembly to replace council

iraqpress ^ | 11/19/03 | Iraqpress

[Pikamax]

36-member Assembly to replace council

Baghdad, Iraq Press, November 19, 2003 – A 36-member National Assembly is to replace the current interim Governing Council before the United States officially hands power over to a transitional government, it has emerged.

The assembly will be an elected body of two representatives from each of the country’s 18 provinces.

Each province will hold elections to choose its two representatives to the Assembly which will form the government and prepare for the writing of a constitution and elections before the end of 2005.

But the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority will hand over power officially to the new government in June 2004.

The move is part of the US-backed plans unveiled on Saturday to give Iraqis almost full say in running their affairs by June next year.

The 25-member Governing Council has welcomed the latest US timetable for the transfer of power. But others see the handover as too slow.

The present US-handpicked council has failed to move quickly to fill the power vacuum created after the collapse of the former regime.

Many say the council’s “impotence” is mainly due to its ethnic and sectarian makeup where the 25 members spend most of their time quarrelling over quotas and power sharing than how to move ahead.

Even the current cabinet, announced on September 1, mirrors the council’s ethnic structure and as a result has been target of scathing attacks in newspaper articles.

If the forthcoming transitional assembly and the transitional government are formed on the same principles, they are probably bound to end up in the same vicious circle the present council finds itself in.

There is no end in sight to the current violent unrest which is spreading rather than receding.

And in the meantime various power groups are jostling for influence in whatever shape the next government is going to take.

The supporters of the controversial Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr have already called for a conference in Baghdad to advance their notion of how Iraq should be governed in the future.

The young cleric, seen by his supporters as wise and as inexperienced and radical by opponents is said to have established a shadow government of his own.

“Our conference is to discuss his (Sadr’s) proposals for the establishment of a new Iraqi government,” said Abdulkarim al-Ali al-Rubai, head of Progressive National Party.

Rubai said he would invite other political groups for what he called “a national Iraqi front” to back “the formation of an Iraqi government as suggested by cleric Muqtada Sadr.”

Rubai said his group will form a transitional national assembly and a transitional government, to rival the US-led steps for the handover of power to a sovereign transitional Iraqi government in June.

[Torie]

The US off the top would be better advised to have this body draw up new constitution, before ceding power, while quietly applying carrots and sticks to try to fashion something that will not blow up in the crib. The key here is to create some kind of federal system, where the Sunni's have some confidence that they will not have their butt kicked up close and personal by the majority Shias. Otherwise, the Sunnis have going to go AWOL big time.