Oops

Five Shia members of the Iraqi Governing Council have thrown the proverbial monkey wrench into US plans for a "handover of power" in June. They failed to show up for a scheduled signing of a draft constitution because they want to renegotiate part of it, making changes which would strengthen their positions.

The document, intended to establish a framework for governing Iraq between the "handover" target date of June 30 and elections for a new government (supposedly taking place by early next year), had seemed to be a "remarkable compromise between the two most cohesive political groups in the country, religious Shia and the Kurdish parties," the Institute for War and Peace Reporting says. But, as the BBC reported on Friday,

[t]here is apparently a dispute over two elements of the draft - named the Transitional Administrative Law - which, until now, had not seemed to be at issue.

Shia members of the IGC are apparently calling for a collective presidency that includes three Shias, one Kurd and one Sunni Muslim.

The draft stipulates a president and two deputies.

It is believed Shias also want to change the mechanisms by which a permanent constitution could be ratified, removing safeguards that would give minority groups a veto.

The IWPR notes that

[a]ccording to the original wording, the constitution will go into effect "if a majority of voters in Iraq approve and if two-thirds of the voters in three or more governorates do not reject it" - wording which essentially gives veto power over the constitution to any regional grouping....

Significantly, the autonomous Kurdish region has three governorates in it, so if the Kurds strongly rejected a proposed constitution, it could not be ratified. It's this provision the Shias on the IGC want to remove. While all the parties had looked upon this as a temporary measure, the IWPR suggests that

the Shia delegates' refusal to accept this clause may also mean that they envision holding off on key demands during the transitional phase, but will use their status as a majority to insert these demands into the constitution.

That is, make compromises now but use their dominant position to force through a Shiite-friendly final constitution (which only requires majority support) which a minority will no longer be able to block. As the BBC tellingly notes,

reports suggest the Shias may have now gone back on a pledge to give Kurds constitutional guarantees.

Seems to me there's no maybe about it.

Footnote: It should be noted that one of the issues driving this is what the draft doesn't say. It specifies neither who will take over from the US at the end of June nor sets a date for elections. Majority Shiites suspect that in the absence of a fixed date, minority Kurds and Sunnis will stall on elections to deny them the political power they feel is their by right. As a result, senior Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani rejected the draft as inadequate. It was in the wake of that rejection that the demands for renegotiation arose.

However, it also should be noted that the changes demanded did not address those concerns, raising the question if Sistani's rejection was the cause of the renewed dispute or the excuse for it.