Iraqi Referendum

In March of last year, the Iraqi Governing Council, operating under the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), drafted the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) -- hailed by the US government as a roadmap to democracy.

The TAL laid out a schedule for various milestones on the way to complete sovereignty. The first milestone was the transfer of authority from the CPA to the Iraqi Interim Government; this was originally to be done on June 30, 2004, but security concerns made it necessary to make the transfer on June 28, apparently in violation of Article 2(B)(1) of the TAL. (But it was ahead of schedule, so who's gonna complain?)

The second milestone, specified in Article 2(B)(2), was the election of a National Assembly and formation of the Iraqi Transitional Government. This was the the purple thumb day you might remember from this past January (which gave us the not-so-randomly-selected purple thumb at the State of the Union address).

I don't think the news media made it clear enough what the purple thumb event signified. I often heard it being described as the moment of transition to a democratically elected government, but this wasn't entirely correct. The Iraqi Transitional Government is a short-lived entity that is to persist until December 15 at the latest. And the National Assembly elected in January is more of a constitutional convention. Article 60 of the TAL states that the National Assembly's role is to draft a constitution, and Article 61 sets October 15 -- today -- as the deadline for a general referendum on it.

There is some concern that enough Sunnis will vote against the constitution to prevent its ratification. So then what happens? Article 61(E) states:

If the referendum rejects the draft permanent constitution, the National Assembly shall be dissolved. Elections for a new National Assembly shall be held no later than 15 December 2005. The new National Assembly and new Iraqi Transitional Government shall then assume office no later than 31 December 2005, and shall continue to operate under [the TAL]... The new National Assembly shall be entrusted with writing another draft permanent constitution.

...Which sounds all well and good, but the timeline set out in the TAL ends here. So if the constitution doesn't get ratified by today's vote, it could be a long, hard road ahead. But then, that could be the case regardless of the outcome.