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Baghdadee بغدادي

DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ الديموقراطيه في العراق


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Over the last days alot of Iraqi writers put alot of efforts on discussing a fake constitution draft that was created by some one and circulated through the media..Then Alsabah newspaper published the same non official draft which made alot of scholars feel so bad assuming that this is the real draft as the Alsabah is governemnt sponsored!

 

To day on Aliraqia tv , the constitution members released the origal agreed on draft of the civil rights part which drove some attention for Islamic content in the fake one. There was no any reffrence to any Islamic laws!!

 

This incedent brought to my attention some fact that our scholars are very sensative toward any such refrence, they even didn't wait until getting better understanding ..I think this is a very healthy , though bit unmatured!

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A primer on Democracy:

 

 

I am a fan of democracy

 

People today speak of democracy both in Iraq and in America. I am not just speaking about common folk. I am talking about many educated people. This is because in an effort to market democracy it has been 'bundled' with freedom, human rights and liberality.

Bundling in marketing is to sell things together. In politics is to confuse to make the word equivalent to your goal equivalent to that of your listener.

 

 

 

This is why I would like to clarify several points:

 

Democracy: is the rule of the majority.

 

Pros: Most people get what they want.

Cons: The minority suffers the tyranny of the majority.

 

Solution: Set rules so that the majority does not infringe on the basic rights of the minorities. The rules governing the mechanism of government are called the constitution. If a constitution protects the rights of minority in a democracy it is called a liberal democracy.

 

Constitution: a set of rules regulating the mechanism of government.

 

Constitution’s Pros:

 

The constitution curbs the influence of government.

It regulates the process of making future law.

It protects minority.

 

Constitution’s Cons:

 

It may become old and new laws have to be made suitable for the times.

 

Solutions: Make it possible to amend the constitution.

 

Pros of amendments: The law is flexible.

Cons of amendments: the liberality may eventually be taken out of the constitution.

 

Liberal democracy:

 

Is a democracy that protects the freedoms and rights of minorities.

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Someone famous once said:

Democracy is a system of govnemetn where people know what they want and they get long and hard.

 

With that in mind, and I woud like people to know that I am not against democracy. I would like iraqi to know that we are not going to be dandy just because we have a democracy. Yes democracy has it problems here is a list:

 

direct democracy(greek style) is not managable with large populations.

Direct democracy equate the votes of 2 people totoaly ignorant about subject x to over a specialist in subject x.

 

Representative democracy does not work if the representatives do not represent.

Let me put it this way they might come steal money and leave.(sound familiar?)

 

Voting procedures produce Chaotic outcomes

Donald Saari a distingushed professor in mathematics proves that the outcome of elections is more influenced by voting procedures than by the voters' preferences. He also proves that the outcome is chaotic

 

since chaotic systems are those determinstic sytems capeable of producing highly unpredictable responses to small changes. For example, pseudo random number generator in your computer is such system. This means that if you bring a bunch of monekys and you make them throw darts at choices, they will produce fundamentaly simliar outcomes to elections. Ironicaly, this is description is not far from the truth.

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This means that if you bring a bunch of monekys and you make them throw darts at choices, they will produce fundamentaly simliar outcomes to elections.

Do have a better way to make them get their gases out?

 

The question hear is not about if democracy the most perfect, the question if there is a better choice!

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This means that if you bring a bunch of monekys and you make them throw darts at choices, they will produce fundamentaly simliar outcomes to elections.

Do have a better way to make them get their gases out?

 

The question hear is not about if democracy the most perfect, the question if there is a better choice!

I would like people to know that I am not against democracy. I would like iraqis to know that we are not going to be dandy just because we have a democracy.

 

PLEAS READ MY COMMENTS CAREFULY.

 

From a decision theoretic perspective, I am hoping you can tell me if random assignments of candidates and outcome is the most perfect. I would also like to point out that the chaotic resutls comes from the method of voting and vote aggregation, not democracy in principle.

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Democracy does not succeed because of the leaders it chooses.  It succeeds because of the leaders that it removes.

Dear Moron:

Andrew Jackson was not removed and he killed Indians and exapnded the role of the presidency. There MANY examples of where democracy failed to remove presidents. They just left out of the tradition of the year term or the law that was later established. There are two presidents that were attacked by the public. One of them is Clinton. Enough said!

I would like to point out that he founding fathers were concerned abotu this democracy turning intoa tyranny as much as we are about the Iraqi experiment today. I would also like to point out when you speak, you seem to assume that democracy works. Nations live longer than people so 300 years of democracy not so breifly interrupted by 100's of years of slavery, lack of women's rights, persecution of minority, and the suspension of liberites in the name of a state of emergency which happens to be prepetualy in existence qualifies for the fianl judegment of democracy working.

In fact, whatever success we have had in this country is due to liberal principles established by the founding fathers. They can be considered the antidote to democracy. Please see my primer.

thank you for you interest int he subject.

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Guest moron99

aldoctor -

 

There is no schoolyard without a bully. There is no religion without a cleric who seeks dominion over your life through the control of your soul. There is no government without a dictator plotting his ascension. It is just who we are. Humans.

 

The greatest achievement of democracy is the ability to remove its own leaders without war or bloodshed. Every meglomaniac who successfully plots his rise to power knows in advance that he can not retain power without pleasing the people. The very thirst for power that drives him to ascend now drives him to become a servant of the people.

 

I would only say - take care with your constitution. If you leave a loophole exposed there will inevitably be a dictator who finds it.

 

Like I said - the greatest achievment of democracy is not how it selects new leaders but rather how it disposes of old ones.

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Dear All:

 

As fan of democracy I tried to contibute to the understanding of democracy, liberality, and constitutionalism. I have apprently failed to communicate what i wanted to communicate. I aplogies. I would like to leave this field after I share share the following references.

 

The basic political writings of Jean Jacques Rosseau

The constitution of the united states

Donald Saari Chaotic election

Arrow's impossibility Theorem

Sen's Theorem

and my humble contribution

Evolutionary Game Theory

Fixed Points in Power Dynamics in Political Systems

You guys can google it. It might be worth while

 

Thanks to Saffa for his comments. Thanks to Salim for his valuable contributions. Thank to all those who tried to understand my point. I hreally hope everyone will consider thaking five minutes per day to google these references.

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This is an amazing article

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20021102/bob8.asp

Safaa Salim, and anyone who is interested in democracy. This is the simplest boil down of the last fifty years of specialists research in democracy.

 

The reader of this article will know more than .9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999

999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999

percent of the population

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I have been watching Al Iraqia for some days and have

seen the the ways members of The national assembly

from various sects interact. The interactions and

debate is mainly between the Shia and the Kurds.

 

The general conclusion of the public, in their debate

on a TV program discussing the constitution, is that

there is a deep sense of distrust between these two

major national and religious groups. The consenses is

that a legacy of distrust between them is what hinders

any progress toward a productive discussion. Spending

hours watching them it appears to me that it is not

the distrust that hampers positive progress but it is

the fierce competetiveness of the very limited

resources of Iraq (resources are limited because of

the current situation and not the actual lack of

resources).

 

The main problem is that everybody thinks and believes

it is distrust. The Shia think that they are as much

entitled to the resources as the Kurds and the Kurds

think the same and both haven't move their attention

to the fact that they are competing to grap as much of

Iraq resources as they can as if all the resources are

about to vanish. This shortsightedness (i.e. distrust)

is getting them nowhere.

 

Both parties need to focus their attention on how to

organise their acts to develop ways to compete fairly

and leginmatily and not to develop ways to prevent

each other from competition. At this stage of Iraq

history competition is quite healthy but has to be

legitimised and it is the way forward to create

competing models for further development of the whole

of Iraq.

 

I think the Kurds must be given the opportunity to

develop their model of social development so that the

Shia may be in a position to learn from them. I say

the Shia must learn from the Kurds because the Kurds

have a clear model in mind which they believe could be

good for their scular autonomous social

infrastructure. On the other hand, the Shia have

little idea of how to develop theirs apart from a

vague idea of a religious state where Sharia is a

dominant part of their model.

 

The Shia know very well that the Kurds are ahead of

them of what exactly they want,therefor they are a bit

worried that the Kurds may develop their model and

leave the Shia behind regressing due their focus on

implementing the Sharia.

 

During the same debate of the public and figures from

the national assembley, the Shia seems to focus on

implicitly demolishing the Kurds' arguement and avoid

a big question of separating religion from state; at

the same time the Kurds are not stressing the

separation of religion and the state because they

think it can be done in their own autonomous model.

This is a typical lose of focus due to

defensivness...sorry for the misspelling since the

spell checker wasn't avaible in this German cafe' browser....salam....Ala

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Ala,

 

I also did over the last couple weeks.. I got different impressions than yours.. Will grape some chance to comment thoroughly later..

 

As I always put it , in Iraq there is no group competition, there is cross group fears.. Iraqi resources "both material and social" are so huge to compete.. What this assembly and other free Iraq institutions and civil debates are doing is to expose these fear in order to cure them.. That is in my opinion part of the strategic plan for building a strong united Iraq.

 

 

 

I might be optimist here.. But future will tell if I am right.. To day all Iraqis are looking toward the current critical meetings by head of groups representatives, let all pray that Iraqis can pass this very very critical mile stone of the political process.. It is our Iraq and we need to build together..

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I acknowledge the legacy of fear,

but would like to say more regarding my interpretation

of "The Fear" and make it more of an open competition

among models. Trying to create passive hamony or not

competing effectively are not good options for us, on

the contrary we need a paradigm shift in political

competition:

 

What I was trying to elicit from all those, though

hampering but still relatively healthy, discussions is

the underlining defensive attitudes that may lead to

loss of focus of Iraqi parties. Defensiveness can be

seen either in an eye of distrust or in an eye of not

knowing the rules and protocols of competition. On the

surface it may seem distrust but if one digs a little

deeper to get to the essence of such interactions, it

may mean a lack of understanding of the rules of

competition.

 

Culturally speaking our children are not trained to

compete without elimination, since wining in our

culture has an elimination dimension only.

 

Keeping such culture in mind, any competition appears

in a facade of distrust. Now...let me make it a little

bit clearer; what appears to be a cross groups fear

(as Safaa suggested) is fear of failure (fear of

failure is not just a fear, it is not knowing how to

compete effectively) before others which may mean

simply competiting ineffectively. Otherwise the

element of fear of the Kurds dominating the political

arena in Iraq is virtually impossible, therefore the

Shia may feel a bit behind in terms of having a

clearer political model apart from the vague religious

one. Therefore, one may ask what the Shia are

frightened of? on the other hand, the Kurds are

frightened of not having enough resources to construct

their own political model which they aspire for. The

Kurds are not just obsessed with nationalistic pride,

but without enough resources they can't reach their

secular, nonreligious model.

 

As we can see I use the term "fear" with an

underlining sense of competition and not just fear of

annihilation.

 

Finally we Iraqis shouldn't be just suspicious of the

Kurds' intention of separating from Iraq, we should

compete with them to establish more humane model

regardless whether the Kurds will separate or not, and

accept the fact that groups competition exists in its

ineffective and ineffecient sense and should be

developed further in a ligitimate

context....salam....Ala

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