Interesting developments in Iraq reported by IraqTheModel:
Today the differences reached the peak when Sistani dropped a bomb by rejecting federalism and thus rejecting the constitution of the Kurdish-Sheat alliance putting the current ruling parties in a difficult position. Sistani in his statement said “The Sunnis are your family. Stay by their side this time so that they stay by your side in the coming times…” ¹
I’ve argued before that I like federalism as practiced here in Switzerland, but acknowledged the fact that federalism doesn’t end all arguments (2005-08-24 Iraq). Financial compensation turns into a constant tug of war in the political arean, so now you have to make sure that the political arena is bound by the constitution and maybe a counstitutional court.
Note that Germany has a constitutional court, for example, but Switzerland has not! This can be problematic because in Switzerland people can only change the constitution using an initiative – they cannot propose new laws. And since normal courts rule according to the laws, it is quite possible to have the constitution say one thing and the courts ruling another way.
What I find encouraging in Sistani’s comment was the rejection of factionalism. One of the darkest futures ahead would be federalism spinning out of control and some form of ethnic/religious cleansing starting to happen à Yugoslawia or India/Pakistan. Just because we had so many wars in Europe followed by ethnic cleansing doesn’t mean that we cannot learn from these mistakes. I really hope that Iraq will be able to avoid this.
#Iraq
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Man will find a way to fight. Where you have two religions, excuse is simple. When you have one religion people will divide themselves in protestants and catholics or orthodox, or they will become shia or sunni etc., etc., But fedralism inspite of all its risks is a good idea. It will ensure atleast some justice to the minority, unlike pseudo democracies like India, SA etc., where unless you are the majority, justice is a distant dream.
– Anonymous 2005-09-01 06:32 UTC
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Federalism as a protection of minorities will only work in places where the internal units (states, cantons) coincide with concentrations of groups that consider themselves minorities in the country. But in Iraq, I heard that the population was extremely mixed – at least in the provinces now considered “Sunni”. Doesn’t Baghdad have Sadr City with over two million Shia’at? In these cases, federalism will not solve the protection of minorities problem.
By the same token, Switzerland would only need a small number of cantons. We have seven million people, three major language groups (German, French, Italian), and a tiny group of about 50k people speaking Rhaeto-Romance. We also have a big political difference between the mountain regions (Innerschweiz) and the industrial areas. So how many cantons would that require – four, five? But instead we have 26 cantons.
Comparing Switzerland to India, the comparison gets more insane: Most Indian states are larger than all of Switzerland. 🙂 I have no idea about actual numbers:
As per 2001 census, the population of the State is 13,42,998. [sic!] – http://goagovt.nic.in/
and
Goa has at present a population of 1.344 million residents, making it India’s fourth smallest (after Sikkim, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh). – Goa
So it seems to me that “federalism” is a many faceted issue that has to be considered carefully before it actually works out. It requires many checks and balances to succeed.
As for your comment that “man will find a way to fight” – I hope that most people do *not* want to fight. So let us hope that they will find no reason to.
– Alex Schroeder 2005-09-01 07:04 UTC