month’s land mark elections for a transitional National Assembly, after results showed that a coalition of Shi’te Muslims won nearly half of the votes.
Cooperating Kurdish parties finished second with about a quarter of the nearly 8.5 million ballots cast on January 30, while a grouping led by interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi finished third with 14 percent, the election commission said.
Analysts said however that the Shi’ites will likely have to form a coalition in the 275-member National Assembly, the parliament, with Kurds and Allawi’s list to push through their agenda and select a president and prime minister.
But official results showed that Iraq’s Christian believers, who are mainly ChaldoAssyrian Christians, and Sunni Muslims were politically marginalized. It has added to concern within churches that the country will move towards an Islamic state, with little or no freedom for religious minorities.
FEW SEATS
"The ChaldoAssyrian Christians would have been expected to win 10 seats in Iraq’s 275 seat National Assembly," said Gordon Lake of ChristianIraq.com, an Internet publication of Iraqi Christians. "That [number] would have matched the three percent share of the Iraqi population that ChaldoAssyrians now enjoy….But that did not happen."
He stressed that just about five ChaldoAssyrian Christian politicians will have seats in the parliament, including four from the Kurdish list, and one from the main ChaldoAssyrian slate, the Rafidain National List.
"8.5 million Iraqis voted in the elections which overall is a victory for the Iraqi people…But for the ChaldoAssyrian community, that victory is bitter sweet," Lake said. Church officials have blamed the lack of Christian participation in the new political landscape of Iraq to the closure of many polling stations during the country’s first multi party elections in half a century.
NINEVEH TROUBLES
"When only 93 of 330 polling stations opened on Election Day in the Nineveh province, which is home to a large percentage of the ChaldoAssyrian Christian population, hopes for meaningful participation faded," added Lake. "Not even protests around the world could help force a remedy to the disenfranchisement felt by the community."
The political tensions come as human rights watchers have also expressed concern about violence directed against Christians, including in the Nineveh town of Mosul, where insurgents reportedly fired on a convoy in Al-Qahira district Sunday, February 13, sparking a battle in which four people died and two were injured. Insurgents also fired a rocket at the governor’s building in Mosul, killing one woman and one man, as well as injuring four others, the Associated Press (AP) news agency quoted officials at the local hospital as saying.
In addition two Iraqi National Guard troops were reportedly killed on Mosul’s airport road while trying to diffuse a roadside bomb. It comes after fierce battles in recent days between United States led coalition forces and insurgents in which dozens of people died.
CHRISTIANS ATTACKED
Christians have often been the target of attacks, as Muslim militants blame them for allegedly supporting the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq or Western values. In August four attacks against Christian targets in Baghdad and two others in Mosul reportedly left at least 10 people dead and 50 injured.
BosNewsLife has also established that Christians owning Liquor stores have been attacked. Human rights watchdogs said that Christian families, several considered wealthy by Iraqi standards, have been targeted by kidnappers for ransoms.
Tens of thousands of Christians are known to have fled the violence and are seeking shelter in neighboring Jordan and Syria. Christian politicians have said they hope to work on a new constitution and era for Iraq which would guarantee equal rights for all religions. (With: BosNewsLife News Center, Reports from Iraq, Stefan J. Bos).
