Council edges away from cleric's vote demand

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=104524

Members of Iraq's US-backed Governing Council have quietly distanced themselves from a top cleric's call for direct elections before the transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis by July next year.

The Council members believe the problems of running a proper election in the present security situation would delay the formal handover of sovereignty. Washington agreed on a plan with the Council last month for regional caucuses to pick a transitional assembly, which will select a sovereign government to oversee the drafting of a constitution and elections. The plan hit a snag last week when Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani – the most influential religious authority for Shiites who make up 60 per cent of Iraq's population – said it was not democratic enough, reiterating an earlier stipulation that the constitution's architects be directly elected.

The head of the Governing Council immediately said the blueprint of the handover would be amended to appease Al Sistani. But representatives of its 24 members said on Tuesday direct elections to a body overseeing the process were unlikely. "In these circumstances it may be difficult to make it possible for all people to participate outside the country, and here with security circumstances as they are," said Adel Abdel Mahdi, a senior official of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the top Shiite political movement.

"We are striving for it to have an electoral character." That view was echoed by other council members who argued direct elections could delay the formal transfer of sovereignty – a grim prospect for a US administration facing domestic pressure over troop casualties in Iraq as it begins its campaign for the 2004 presidential election.
<snip>

That didn't take long.

[The Magistrate]

1. They Can Edge Away All They Like

Al Sistani can put a million people in the streets with a nod....

[bvar22]

2. Of Course they "edged away"!

The IRC is a council of bush* quislings, who do and say what bush* wants them to say. The last thing the bush* corporate predators want is a representative democracy in Iraq. The 24 members of the council of quislings will be among the first sacrificed when the inevitable civil war erupts. I struggle to find some compassion. Their deaths at the hands of the fundamentalists will not be pretty. Their only hope for survival is to trust that bush* will not abandon them, and somehow get them on a last flight out of Iraq.

Oh the nightmare...to be in a position where you have to trust your life to george bush*. But hell, they made their bed when they trusted bush* in the first place.