The Iraqi Constitutional Referendum

Yesterday was another historic day for Iraq and their search for a wider democracy. The referendum went about with relative calm (there were bombings and kidnappings) and out of the total voting population, there seems to be a 61-66% of participation. This is, in my opinion, an optimistic sign that shows that all the efforts to include the sunni population paid off in the end. The sunnis, specially in Baghdad, came out to vote after months and weeks were everyone expected them to boycott the vote and rob it of legitimacy.

Final results will come on October 24th but we should expect a clear tendency by Wednesday. This will be important since we'll learn if Iraq has accepted the constitution or not. Though the constitution was in a way "watered down" to not include the controversial topics that had it in stalemate, it is still seen as a solid base to work from and create a legal and trust frame that will be needed to tackle those problems later.

I hope that if the constitution is accepted, the problems will have to be resolved in a political manner and the resistance will slow down and decrease some. And with that, the removal of US troops.

Read the full article (in Spanish): http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/internacional/37192.html


Tags: Current events, International, In the News, News and Politics, Iraq