Thousands March in Iraq to Demand Early Elections

"Tens of thousands of Iraqi's saying "No to America"

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BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of demonstrators shouting "No to America" marched on Thursday in a huge show of strength by the country's Shi'ite Muslim majority against U.S. plans for a transitional Iraqi government.

An aide to Iraq (news - web sites)'s most revered Shi'ite cleric said Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani could issue an edict banning Iraqis from backing a U.S. appointed interim cabinet if Washington did not hold direct elections for a sovereign Iraqi government.

An edict by Sistani could turn many Shi'ites -- who make up about 60 percent of Iraqis -- against the United States at a time when U.S.-led occupation forces are battling insurgents in the center of the country, known as the Sunni triangle. The demonstration took place on the day bank notes bearing the face of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) ceased being legal tender, another removal of his image from Iraqi life.

In mainly Shi'ite Basra, Iraq's second city, demonstrators chanted "Yes, yes for Islam; No America, No Saddam" and slogans promoting unity with the minority Sunni community.

<http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=2&u=/nm/20040115/ts_nm/iraq_dc>


U.S. Army troops watch a demonstration by the Coalition of Iraqi National Unity in Baghdad, January 15, 2004. Tens of thousands of demonstrators shouting 'No to America' marched through Basra on supporting a call by Iraq (news - web sites)'s most revered Shi'ite cleric for direct elections to form a sovereign Iraqi government. (Akram Saleh/Reuters)

Interesting transcript from yesterday's Democracy Now interview with Mid East expert Juan Cole.

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AMY GOODMAN: A short time ago, I spoke with professor Juan Cole. He's the professor of modern Middle East and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. He runs a analytical website called Informed Comment in which he provides a daily roundup of news and events in Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world. The address is Juancole.com. Cole speaks fluent Arabic, Persian and Urdu and he has also lived all over the Muslim world. He continues to research Iran and Shiite Islam, the subject of his Sacred Space and Holy War. The book collects some of the work on the history of Shiite Islam in Iraq in the modern Gulf. I asked him to talk about Paul Bremer's comments.

JUAN COLE: The problem from the point of view of the Iraqis who want free and open elections is that the elections that are now in visage by Mr. Bremer have a very narrow base. They will be conducted by municipal or provincial councils which were appointed by - on the whole by the Americans or the British. It is those handpicked members of provincial councils who will choose the majority of the delegates to the electoral college, which in turn will choose a parliament. The American appointed interim governing council, which oversees all of Iraq will also be able to appoint a certain number of persons to the most basic level of the electorate. This is not a democratic election at all. This is an election based upon the traces of a fairly small number of handpicked delegates installed by the U.S. and Great Britain.

AMY GOODMAN: The Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has rejected the plan for a transitional national assembly chosen by a caucus of delegates to assume power on June 30th. You have the Shiites calling for majority rule and although Bremer says he supports it, it doesn't look that way?

JUAN COLE: Yes. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has insisted that these elections, which are scheduled for the end of May, be held on a one-person, one-vote basis throughout the country. He wants this, he says because only such elections could guarantee that the will of the sovereign Iraqi people was represented in the government that emerged. So, he is talking very much like Jean Jacques Rousseau. He is talking about sovereignty residing in the body politic. He thinks that an election based upon these appointed provincial councils simply would not be democratic; it would not have democratic results. I think he's also afraid that the U.S. and the United Kingdom when they appointed these members of provincial councils, often favored ex-bosses who had cooperated at some point with them in overthrowing Saddam and who tended to be semi Arabs. I think Sistani is afraid that these councils will produce a government that's not only not legitimate but also not representative.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/14/1553231#transcript

Juan Cole's website: http://www.juancole.com/