One Candidate Has a Simple Solution: Crown Him King

A quick look around the Middle East, says Sharif Ali bin Hussein, is all it takes to see what Iraq needs in these troubled times: a king.

Republics such as Egypt and Libya, and Islamic regimes such as Iran, are dealing with varying degrees of economic hardship, political instability and repression after overthrowing their monarchs. Iraq is in the throes of its third war in 25 years.

Meanwhile, kingdoms such as Jordan, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates are faring better.

“Look at the [Persian] Gulf states and look at Iraq. The UAE was desert 30 years ago, and now it’s a paradise,” said Bin Hussein, 47, a former investment banker. “[Iraqis] say, ‘Fifty years ago, we were the leading light of the region, and now we’re a basket case.’ ”

And who better to ascend to the throne, argues Bin Hussein, than himself? He is, after all, a cousin of Faisal II, Iraq’s last king, who was killed after a 1958 military coup. He is also distantly related to Jordan’s royal family.

Never mind that his family fled Iraq when he was a toddler and he didn’t come back until after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Or, as his opponents point out, that he has no experience in governing.

Of all the sheiks, tribal chieftains and exiles clamoring for a spot in Sunday’s landmark Iraqi parliamentary election, perhaps none is as weirdly compelling as Bin Hussein.

Since his return from London, where his wife and four children still live, the trim and dapper Bin Hussein has steadily built a campaign machine for his Constitutional Monarchy Movement. He has portrayed it as a populist, outsider alternative to the exile parties that stocked the former U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. He talks about those parties the way revolutionaries usually talk about a king.

“They’re very isolated, very introverted,” he said. “There was no attempt while they were in the government to build a constituency, to build broad support.”

Bin Hussein, a Sunni Muslim, characterizes himself as one of the last remaining voices for that group, which makes up perhaps 20% of Iraq’s population and resides mainly in the middle of the country. Sunnis took power in the 1920s under the British-backed monarchy and continued to dominate under Hussein’s Baath Party, which came to power in the ‘60s.

“Basically, the central provinces have no other candidates left,” said Bin Hussein, dismissing the electoral slates of President Ghazi Ajil Yawer and former Foreign Minister Adnan Pachachi as tainted by their involvement in the U.S.-appointed Iraqi leadership. “There’s nobody left in the field. We have no competition.”

Other Sunni politicians are skeptical. One candidate on a major national slate, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the prospect of a monarchy appealed only to a small segment of the Sunni community and tribal groups with historical ties to Bin Hussein’s royal bloodline.

But some observers think Iraq’s beleaguered population might be open to any idea that promises stability.

“People go to Jordan and say: ‘This is the way our country ought to be run. It’s clean, it’s quiet,’ ” said an American official with an international organization that works closely with Iraqi political parties. “That’s what a king brings you -- that kind of stability.”

Though Jordan may be a model for Bin Hussein’s vision, he claims no support from his relatives in Jordan. In fact, they may be rivals: At least two princes, Raad and Hassan, are rumored to have their eyes on a reestablished Iraqi throne.

To Bin Hussein, whose honorific “sharif” identifies him as a descendant of the prophet Muhammad, a vote for a monarchy is not a vote against democracy.

“A constitutional monarchy is not contradictory to democracy. The transition from dictatorship to democracy is better suited to a constitutional monarchy than a weak and ineffectual republic,” he said.

“The examples of the republics have been total failures, not only in Iraq but in the Middle East as a whole,” he said.

Bin Hussein’s proposal for Iraq’s future political order centers around a king -- himself -- who would operate above the fray of party politics, serving as both a rallying point for the national identity and a check on the government’s powers.

“The monarchy would not owe its existence to any political group,” he said. “So if you had an Islamic party or Communist party or whatever that started enacting laws because they have the majority, that was in contradiction to the constitution, then the monarch would have the ability not to sign off on those laws and to refer government decisions to a constitutional court.”

His vision is somewhat weakened by the fact that Iraq’s monarchy was a largely artificial creation imposed on the country after World War I by Britain, which together with France divided up the remnants of the Ottoman Empire.

Bin Hussein, who was raised in Cairo and Beirut before settling in Britain, attended the universities of Nottingham and Essex. He was working in London at the United Bank of Kuwait before he returned to Iraq in the summer of 2003.

With the election only days away, Bin Hussein says he likes his chances. His party has run an aggressive campaign, blanketing Baghdad with his image and playing on public frustration with the performance of the interim government.

In one case, the party distributed fliers to Iraqis sitting in the capital’s endless gasoline lines. The leaflets were topped with the word maku (“none”), surrounded by the words for gasoline, kerosene and electricity.

“We said, ‘Where are we going to find a captive audience?’ ” Bin Hussein said. “They sit for two days cursing the government. It’s perfect.”