The voting in Sunday's Iraqi election was large enough to cause critics of the Bush administration policy to fall silent, for at least a moment. The display of Iraqi "people power" begs comparison to past peaceful uprisings -- in Poland, the Philippines, Nicaragua, and, most recently, Ukraine.

However, it might still be noted that a single election does not make a democracy. At the close of the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention in 1787, Ben Franklin was asked what kind of government had been created. He answered, "A republic, if you can keep it." Franklin's point was that writing a constitution is the easy part; the hard part is keeping it alive.

So the real proof of American democracy did not come until after the 1800 election, when the Federalists, who had dominated politics in the first dozen years of the young republic, were defeated at the polls. Would President John Adams, having lost the vote, turn the White House over to Thomas Jefferson, whom Adams detested? The answer was yes. The principle of popular sovereignty was enshrined.

A similar test for Iraq could come in the next year or so. Last May, a poll taken by the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies asked Iraqis to rank 17 prominent religious and political leaders. Not surprisingly, Ayad Allawi, a former Saddam Hussein henchman-turned-CIA-asset, finished in 16th place -- and yet as a reward for his recent loyalty, the Americans named him prime minister.

So how will Allawi fare if democracy breaks out in Iraq? Interestingly, the man who finished first in that poll was the Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, still regarded by experts as the most popular figure in Iraq. Al-Sistani is known to oppose Allawi. So will Allawi step down if he loses a vote? Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, al-Sistani and his Shiites are feared by the Sunni Muslims and the ethnic Kurds, who each compose perhaps 20 percent of the population. How will the Shiites act toward the Sunnis? Many of the Sunnis, of course, are engaged in open warfare against all comers. The Shiites are likely to encourage the Americans to continue to squelch Sunni resistance.

The Kurds are a trickier case, because they, too, have American support. The Kurds in Iraq have been struggling for autonomy, even independence, for a century. And, by the way, they want the rich oil fields of Kirkuk in their separate territory.

Yet when it comes to the protection of minority rights, no group seems to have clean hands. According to Yonadam Kanna, a leader of the Christian minority in Iraq, 250,000 Christians were prevented from voting on Sunday -- by the Kurds. As Kanna put it, "This latest episode denying the ChaldoAssyrians their right to vote is another step towards cleansing Iraq from the indigenous ChaldoAssyrian Christians." And what of the Shiites? What's their vision of democratic freedom? Will women, for example, have the right to live free of theocratic domination?

The Washington Post's Anthony Shadid, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his Iraq war reporting, traveled to the Shiite city of Basra and noted the power wielded by the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, a Shiite group founded in Iran. According to Shadid, SCIRI "oversaw a growing conservatism in a city long famed as the most libertine in the region. Liquor stores, once numbering in the dozens, have shuttered. At high schools and at Basra University, women were encouraged -- often by force -- to wear veils." To be sure, Iraq doesn't miss Saddam Hussein. Iraqis are free, finally, to express that strong opinion.

But as for what happens next in the Middle East, it seems likely that a Sistani/Shiite/SCIRI- dominated Iraq will look a lot like Iran. Those who celebrate Muslim people power might recall that the Iranian revolution of 1979, which overthrew the pro-American Shah, was undeniably a popular uprising. Today, Iran is still strongly anti-American, even as it is arguably more of a democracy than any Arab country. Although Iraq might now be catching up.

James P. Pinkerton
www.theday.com