** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **

A Constitutional Referendum that Wasn’t

The Ester Republic
published November 15, 2005 by Dahr Jamail

/Similar to how the invasion of Iraq was wrapped in bright and shining
lies in order to be sold to the American people, the lauded
constitutional referendum was fraught with inconsistencies, fraud, and
poor preparation./

Did anyone else find it interesting that the results of the vote on
Iraq’s constitution passing (which occurred ten days earlier) were
released on the same day of the announcement of the 2,000th US soldier
having been killed in Iraq?

On October 25, the first news of the day about Iraq across most
corporate media outlets in the US was that Iraq was celebrating the
approval of a new constitution. Just hours after this news, Mr. Bush
made a pre-emptive propaganda move in an attempt to blunt the blow of
the incoming news of the 2,000 milestone, by telling a group of military
wives at an air force base in Washington “This war will require more
sacrifice, more time and more resolve.”

Then, less than three hours after this speech, the news of the 2,000th
US soldier dying was poured across the headlines; conveniently timed in
that the Department of Defense usually has several deaths awaiting
confirmation for days before they may be announced publicly.

But that’s old news now. With troop levels soon to be over 161,000 in
Iraq (remember when it was 138,000?) and the death toll over 2,030 and
increasing daily, more milestones loom as a failed political process is
pushed forward. We just passed another, in fact; with at least
ninety-three troops killed in October, which made it the bloodiest month
since January.

Similar to how the invasion of Iraq was wrapped in bright and shining
lies in order to be sold to the people of the United States, the recent
constitutional referendum vote in Iraq occurred in a similar vein.

“You cannot wage a war without rumors, without media, without
propaganda,” said Samir Khader, a senior producer at the Al-Jazeera
Satellite Television Network, “Any military planner who plans for a war,
if he doesn’t put media/propaganda on top of his agenda, he’s a bad
military.”

The vote had many similarities to the farce which took place on January
30—aside from a repeat of the draconian measures to provide security and
quite a large dose of propaganda.

Just prior to the so-called constitutional referendum vote in occupied
Iraq, one of my close friends in Baghdad wrote me, “I would like to
point out that we are three days away from the referendum, yet very
large sectors of Iraqi people couldn’t receive part of the five million
copies [of the constitution] from the UN, i.e.—they will not know what
the constitution contains...what kind of vote is this?”

His confusion makes sense, considering that only five million copies of
the so-called constitution were printed and supposedly distributed to
12.5 million registered voters in Iraq. The spokesman for the White
House proclaimed that “tens of millions” of copies of the constitution
were printed and distributed, then failed to comment on the fact that
hours before the vote occurred a clause was added to the constitution
stating it could be amended by the incoming government for four months
after they take power.

This last-minute attempt to garner Sunni support failed to accomplish
much, as Sunni leaders were all too aware of the fact that the
possibility of amending the constitution, which would require a
two-thirds vote by the Shia/Kurdish dominated parliament, would be
virtually impossible.

The inconsistencies hadn’t started there, however, because the
constitution was to have been completed by August 1. But despite illegal
delays which were not even backed by the parliament in Iraq, the
controversial portions of the document like federalism and Sharia
Islamic Law were not even worked out prior to the vote. Thus, an
incomplete draft of the constitution was put to vote, without a vote of
authorization by the Iraqi government.

US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad even consistently pressured the Iraqi
government to accept his own drafts of articles which included words
like “oil” and “military bases” in the so-called constitution in the
weeks leading up to the vote.

“It is a matter of public record that in the final weeks of the process
the newly arrived US ambassador (Zalmay Khalilzad) took an extremely
hands-on role,” Justin Alexander, legal affairs officer for the office
of constitutional support with the United Nations Assistance Mission to
Iraq told me. “Even going so far as to circulate at least one US draft.”

Figures provided by several governorates required Iraq’s Independent
Electoral Commission (IEC) to order (under heavy Sunni political
pressure) “re-examination, comparison and verification because they
[voter turnout figures] are relatively high compared with international
averages for elections” of this kind; according to a statement made by
the IEC.

This occurred rather inconveniently after US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice’s nearly instantaneous belief and statement that the
constitution “has probably been passed,” despite what the IEC referred
to in findings showing “that figures from most provinces were too high,”
referencing voter turnout.

Huge discrepancies were reported in the Nineveh governorate, which
includes Mosul, showing that while sources close to the IEC were quoted
saying that fifty-five percent of the voters there voted against the
constitution, which meant the constitution was accepted due to not
having a two-thirds vote against it. However, Abd al-Razaq al-Jiburi,
the secretary general of the Iraqi Independent Front said
contradictorily, “I have been informed by an employee of the electoral
high commission in Mosul that the voting for the constitution has been
‘no.’”

He went on to add that his sources within the IEC said the “no” vote in
Nineveh ranged between seventy-five and eighty percent, which would have
defeated the constitution as Al-Anbar and Salahedin governorates had
already voted it down.

This, on top of widespread accusations of ballot stuffing and missing
ballot boxes from predominantly Sunni regions reported by Arab outlets
such as Al-Ahram and Al-Jazeera, added a dark cloud of confusion and
doubt over the entire referendum process.

Nevertheless, now the stage is set for a vote for a new Iraqi government
on December 15, which is sure to deepen the divide which is fracturing
Iraq. Between the institutionalization of Sharia Law, federalism and the
possibility of an increasingly powerful Kurdistan, the Sunni population
in Iraq only becomes more disenfranchised.

The idea of political stability seems more of a pipe dream in Iraq now
than it did before the recent vote on the constitution.

Hinting at things to come in December, Sunni leader Saleh Mutlaq told
reporters: “Violence is not the only solution, if politics offers
solutions so that we can move in that direction. But there is very
little hope that we can make any gains in the elections.”

Hussein al-Falluji, another prominent Sunni politician, said the
referendum was manipulated by Washington, and added, “We all know that
this referendum was fraud conducted by an electoral commission that is
not independent. It is controlled by the occupying Americans and it
should step down before elections in December.”

This is against the backdrop of the recent news of a survey commissioned
by the British military in Iraq. The survey found that eighty-two
percent of Iraqis “strongly oppose” the continuing presence of coalition
troops and forty-five percent of Iraqis felt that attacks against
coalition troops are justified.

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