Monday, March 1, 2004
This sounds promising. Yes, "Islam" will be a basis for Iraqi law, but not the basis, which sounds like a workable compromise. They'll have to decide how to determine such things, but with other provisions such as 25 percent of the seats in the provisional legislature set aside for women (is that a minimum?), there seems to be good indication that what's happening in Iraq still falls under the category of "exciting."
Iraqi Council Agrees on Terms of Interim Constitution (washingtonpost.com)
The country's 25-member, U.S.-appointed Governing Council reached consensus on the 63rd and final article of the document at 4:20 a.m. local time, after more than 10 hours of almost nonstop negotiations mediated by the American administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, people involved in the meeting said.
"It's a historic document," said Faisal Istrabadi, one of the lead drafters and a senior aide to council member Adnan Pachachi. "Every single article, and each subparagraph, had the consensus of all 25 people in the room. . . . In the best tradition of democracies -- granted, we are an aspiring democracy -- we all compromised."
The document, which will provide a legal framework for Iraq until elections are held and a permanent constitution is drafted, grants broad protections for individual rights, guaranteeing freedom of speech, assembly and religion, and other liberties long denied by the Baath Party government of former president Saddam Hussein. In an unprecedented step toward gender equality in the Arab world, the document sets aside 25 percent of the seats in the provisional legislature for women, council aides said...
