Washington, June 07: While the drafting of a new Iraqi constitution is just weeks away, a senior official in the US-led provisional authority in Iraq termed the political climate in the country as "unfit for democracy", even as aspiring political figures in the country raised apprehensions of US involvement in the election process. "If you have a free and open democratic process in an undeveloped political climate like we have here," the official said, "it will be dominated by the extremes of the Iraqi political figures,” a media report said.
"If we had an electoral process now, it would be in a climate that would not be as secure as we would like. It would be in a climate where the media is far from properly developed, and no political party has a national framework except the outlawed Baath Party of Saddam Hussein,” the Washington Times quoted the official as saying.
However, the paper noted, aspiring Iraqi political figures would like to see us troops and civilian overseers withdrawn as quickly as possible. "We are concerned that the participants of the constitutional convention will be selected by the Americans, not the Iraqis themselves," said Hamid al-Bayati, a political adviser to the Iranian-based Supreme Council of the Islamic Republic in Iraq.
"We would like to see the Iraqi administration selected by Iraqis, and we believe we have this mandate from the UN Security Council", he said.
The key concern for many Iraqis, said the paper, is that both the political council and the hundred or more participants in the proposed constitutional convention will be chosen by the coalition, not the Iraqis themselves. Bureau Report