Kurdistan's Troubled Democracy
by Scott Carpenter and
Michael Rubin
Washington Post
April 18, 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2121/kurdistan-troubled-democracy
Shortly after taking office, President Obama congratulated
Iraqis on successful provincial elections. "Millions of Iraqi citizens
from every ethnic and religious group went peacefully to the polls across
the country to choose new provincial councils," he declared on Jan. 31. But this was not quite the case. In the
three provinces that comprise Iraqi Kurdistan, the regional parliament
postponed the vote until May 19. Only recently have plans been made to
hold the elections.
In Iraq, elections are critical. They improve security by
legitimizing power relationships while allowing people to vent
frustration. In the Jan. 31 provincial elections, Iraqis chose for the
most part to "throw the bums out," selecting candidates who they thought
would abandon narrow sectarian objectives and best address their problems
at the local level. The question now is whether a similar degree of
freedom will exist in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Iraqi Kurdish officials have long touted their region as
democratic. In January, regional President Massoud Barzani declared, "The
culture of democracy has to be promoted and deeply rooted." His son
Masrour, head of the region's intelligence service, wrote that Kurdistan's
"commitment to democracy and tolerance made us natural U.S. allies." The
Web site of the region's investment arm describes Iraqi
Kurdistan as "a place that has practiced democracy for over a decade."
And before Saddam Hussein was ousted, Iraqi Kurdistan was
certainly more democratic than the rest of Iraq. But this is no longer the
case.
Barzani's Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the party of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani,
refuse to compete in open elections, choosing instead to divide power
equally. While more benign than Hussein's Baath Party, Kurdish authorities
have adopted the Baathist model, requiring party membership to guarantee
university slots, qualify for the best jobs or win lucrative contracts.
Independent candidates report intimidation and threats.
In the past four years, there have been three competitive
elections in Iraq, more than Syria, Egypt or Saudi Arabia have managed in
the past four decades. With each election, Iraq's democracy has
solidified. In January 2005, voters selected parties from a nationwide
list. Such a system undercut representative democracy by divorcing
politicians from local concerns and making them dependent on party bosses
to whom they had to pledge fealty. The system evolved by the next round of
voting, in December 2005: While still based on proportional representation
rather than individual constituencies (as in the United States),
candidates ran by province, forcing them to be more responsive to
constituents. The provincial elections this year heralded more reform:
Iraqis could choose individual candidates from lists or even choose
independent candidates; they did not have to vote a party slate. And while
in the 2005 elections the parties coalesced along ethnic and confessional
lines, in January, Shiite parties ran independently of each other,
allowing voters rather than party bosses the ultimate say in their
representation.
In contrast to the rest of Iraq, Kurdish parties have
already cemented alliances and power-sharing agreements. Voters in Iraqi
Kurdistan will not have the benefit of real competition or open lists. Nor
will they be able to choose among individuals.
In a region where corruption and party abuse of power have
become dominant issues, this undercuts accountability. Furthermore, the
Kurdish parliament -- dominated by the parties of Barzani and Talabani --
has forbidden independent monitoring, which contributed so much to the
success of the elections in the rest of Iraq.
After five brutal years, the rest of Iraq is developing real
electoral politics that is helping to defuse conflict, create
accountability and foster stability. It is possible that, in time, other
institutions of the democratic system, including a free parliament and
media, will strengthen as a result. This would be a welcome development
not only in Iraq but in the rest of the Middle East.
Once, Iraqi Kurdistan touted itself as a model for the rest
of Iraq. Now, the Obama administration should do everything it can to
ensure that it is not left behind. Absent reform in that critical region,
the rest of Iraq may become the model for it.
Scott Carpenter is the Keston Family Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy. Michael
Rubin is editor of the Middle
East Quarterly and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise
Institute.
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