Democracy gives ‘thieves’ freedom to pillage: Iraqi Hezbollah official

Democracy has allowed “thieves” to plunder and pillage Iraq, Secretary of Hezbollah in the country said in an interview on Saturday.

“The drawbacks of a democratic system is that it allows thieves to pillage what they want,” Wathiq al-Battat was quoted by the Cairo-based Al-Sharqiya News as saying.

“We have yet to see a successful system governing Iraq,” he said, adding that only an Islamic system of governance, based on the Sharia and included both Sunnis and Shiites could successfully lead Iraq.

“People of other religions can have their representatives in this system,” he said.

Battat proposed holding a referendum in which Iraqis could be asked whether they wanted the Sharia to be implemented or preferred the continuance of a “fake democracy.” He described the latter as a “hotbed” for “thieves” being run by those who sold Iraq.

However, he opposed the current campaign to unseat the country’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki who is increasingly being described as “dictator,” and said that a no-confidence vote would bring Iraq back to “square one.”

He said only citizens would bear the burden of such a campaign.

“In the past, political disputes would focus on quotas but now it’s personal differences,” he said, describing “the real weakness in the current Iraqi regime is parties who have authority are weak and not strong.”

Although Hezbollah in Iraq is not as strong a political force as its counterpart in Lebanon, its alliances have proved to be tactical.

The Iranian-backed Hezbollah is alleged to have helped train members of the Mahdi Army, the Iraqi Shiite militia led by Moqtada al-Sadr. Sadr, head of the Sadrist bloc, however, is working with other political parties to unseat the country’s prime minister.