Thinking Beyond Maliki

Does anyone imagine that Maliki enjoys the confidence of the majority of Iraqis? If he does not, parliament, representing the people, has the perfect right to vote no confidence and bring down the government.

And then? Rather than seek a new coalition as a shaky substitute, the better alternative is new elections. And this time we must not repeat the mistake of election by party list, a system almost designed to produce warlord leadership and unstable coalitions.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, returning from two weeks of reserve duty in Iraq, noted that the August parliamentary recess was beneficial because it allowed the members to hear from angry hometown citizens demanding political compromise and peace. But the problem with the current system is that Iraqi MPs are not elected by their hometown citizens. They are chosen by party bosses.

A sample of the countries that have chosen this absurd form of democracy -- Italy, Israel and Weimar Germany -- gives you an idea of the balkanized, unstable politics that party-list systems inevitably produce. With a constituency system (members elected by a real geographic entity), the Anbar sheiks would be the ones sitting in parliament negotiating on behalf of Sunnis -- not members of a faux-national Sunni party that represents very little.

New elections are not a panacea. They will take long to organize -- which is why we should have been working toward this months ago. But the reconciliation from below that is actually happening in the provinces could -- and logically should -- be making national reconciliation possible in Baghdad. We can't sit around forever waiting for Maliki.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com