As President Jalal al-Talabani was unveiling a draft constitution late Sunday afternoon at a restrained ceremony in his compound, one of Iraq's newest political stars was holding court near the National Assembly hall in front of a shouting, elbowing crush of reporters and cameras.
The figure was Sheik Abdul Nasser al-Janabi, standing resplendent in his white dishdasha and religious headscarf, a Sunni Arab who had come before the microphones to denounce the constitution. Al-Janabi is one of 15 Sunnis pulled from obscurity into the limelight because of the American insistence on making the constitutional drafting committee as inclusive as possible.
Now al-Janabi was upstaging the Iraqi president, a Kurd, and Hussain al-Shahristani, a Shiite, who had just formally presented the constitution to a desultory and thinly attended session of the Assembly, where he is the deputy speaker.
"We started our work on the principle of consensus," Janabi said in ringing tones, "but we faced ideologies that aim to divide Iraq, waste its wealth and dismiss its Arabic and Islamic identity."
"We have objections that we cannot overlook," al-Janabi said. "So we declare our rejection of those points and of the draft, on which we did not reach consensus." Because he was speaking for all of the 15 Sunnis on the constitutional committee, al-Janabi asserted, his declaration "makes the draft illegal."
The Shiites, Kurds and Americans who worked as allies in the negotiations may have produced a charter with a fighting chance of being approved at the polls on Oct. 15. But what is without question is that almost overnight, the talks have catapulted hard-line Sunni politicians back into the center of Iraqi public life after they were effectively banished with the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
All the good lines belonged to the Sunnis on this day, and indeed they had all the rhetorical advantages: They cast themselves as opposition figures taking a stand on principle, and yet as the historical ruling class in Iraq they came off as smooth, educated and articulate before the microphones.
While al-Talabani, who bears an odd but occasionally striking resemblance to Theodore Roosevelt in his later years, was left with lines like "I would like to bring good news to the Iraqi people," another Sunni on the committee, Mahmoud al-Mashadani, sounded like Che Guevara when he said, "We have been the victim of a dictatorship of the political elite."
Saleh Mutlak, the informal leader of the group of 15, followed al-Janabi in front of the microphones and topped everyone, as usual. "We know very well if the street were asked its opinion, the ground would shake under those who wrote this constitution," Mutlak said.
"But," he added, "we ask Iraqis to be peaceful and not violent."
Interviews on Sunday night with ordinary citizens yielded some evidence that Sunni Arabs were starting to focus on calls by Mutlak and his group to vote against the constitution. "I will vote `no' on it and I will try to persuade my friends to vote no on it, too," said Thamir al-Shamri, a 33-year-old lawyer in the northern city of Mosul, a Sunni.
"It comes from just two groups," al-Shamri said, referring to the Kurds and Shiites, "so it's an illegal constitution."
In Baghdad, views were decidedly mixed, with both Shiites and Sunnis coming down on both sides of the question. But it was clear that the notion of federalism -- the system that would spread some of Baghdad's historical powers to the provinces and allow the creation of a large, semiautonomous Shiite region in the south -- had become a topic of popular debate.
"I think federalism is a very civilized way of governing, but in Iraq it could lead to separation," said Ahmed Sulaiman, 53, who owns a market in the Sunni Adhamiya neighborhood of Baghdad.
Still, there was no evidence that Sunni discontent with the charter was having any effect on the insurgent violence that is thought to be led by disaffected members of the wider Sunni community.
In fact, as Sunni fortunes during the negotiations rose and fell, the violence remained as chaotic and senseless as ever. That brought into question the original reason the Americans pressed for Sunnis to join the constitutional committee -- to draw some of the less committed slices of the insurgency into the political process.
Some participants charged that the Sunnis, many of whom are former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party, were determined to obstruct the talks from the start.
But the background of the Sunnis was well known, and no one in the negotiations seemed troubled by it until the Sunnis began turning up the pressure, said Hachem al-Hassani, the moderate Sunni who is the speaker of the Assembly.
"These people were chosen, everybody accepted them," al- Hassani said. "You can't come back and say, `You're in the Baath party.' You've got to keep the process going."
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia