...there...

What's sauce for the goose is apparently not sauce for the gander in the eyes of the WHS*. While still stomping around here, wiggling their butts in a touchdown taunt and bragging about their "mandate" based on squeaking out a 2% majority among those who thought it mattered enough to vote, the Shrub gang is proposing proportional representation in Iraq. According to Sunday's New York Times,

[t]he Bush administration is talking to Iraqi leaders about guaranteeing Sunni Arabs a certain number of ministries or high-level jobs in the future Iraqi government if, as is widely predicted, Sunni candidates fail to do well in Iraq's elections.

An even more radical step, one that a Western diplomat said was raised already with an aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most revered Shiite cleric, is the possibility of adding some of the top vote-getters among the Sunni candidates to the 275-member legislature, even if they lose to non-Sunni candidates. ...

Guaranteeing a certain number of positions in government for certain ethnic groups is not without precedent, though. Lebanon, for example, has a power-sharing arrangement among its main sectarian groups. The Parliament in Iran has seats reserved for religious minorities.

The proposal was, let's say, not widely embraced.

"This idea is a nonstarter," said Feisal al-Istrabadi, Iraq's deputy permanent representative at the United Nations.

And Iraq's Electoral Commission rejected the idea outright.

Speaking of "unacceptable" interference, Electoral Commission spokesman Farid Ayar said: "Who wins, wins. That is the way it is. That is the way it will be in the election. ...

"The Americans are expressing their views and those aren't always the same as the Commission's," Ayar told Reuters.

"But the Commission is absolutely independent. It is not acceptable for anyone to interfere in our business."

I wonder how much of this goes back to a concern I expressed back on March 23: the question of just what the word "democracy" means to different people. Technically, it means "rule by the people" and is usually equated with majority rule. But it's not quite that simple in practice. Because we have operated under a Bill of Rights for so long, we tend to forget that our concept of democracy actually is majority rule with protection for minority rights. I do think there is a serious question whether or not the Shiite community in Iraq sees it that way - or do they simply see it as "we're in charge now?" Shrugging off concerns with "who wins, wins" in the absence of any guarantees for the minority is not, to my way of thinking, an encouraging sign.

Footnote, Non Sequitur Award: After saying the idea for some sort of proportional representation was a nonstarter, Ayer added

"[b]ut what it tells you is that inherently people are concerned about the problems with respect to legitimacy of the elections, not because people are going to boycott, but because people are going to be afraid to vote."

No offense, but, uh, how exactly does it tell you that?

Footnote, Non Sequitur Award, Runner-Up: Colin Powerless

said last week that the United States did not favor talking with any leaders of the insurgency to get them to lay down their arms and take part in the election. "They're terrorists, they're murderers, and they have no interest in a free, fair election or democratic participation in such elections," he said.

So in other words, the only people you try to convince to support elections are those who already agree with you?

Well, now that I think about it, after the election, Bush grandly allowed as how he was willing to work with anyone from "the other side" or "across the aisle" or whatever cliche it was he used who was willing to help advance his agenda, i.e., with anyone who agreed with him. So I guess this actually is in keeping with White House policy.

*WHS = White House Sociopaths