[Media-watch] Tablet: Ballot rigging in Iraq

[Sigi D]

Hello dear Media Watch Friends,
this is from the Catholic Tablet - ballot rigging in
Iraq.
Best
Sigi
http://www.thetablet.co.uk/cgi-bin/citw.cgi/past-00216#ASIA1

Iraqi Christians protest at ballot rigging. TEN
THOUSAND Christians took to the streets in protest on
Monday claiming their voting papers in Iraq’s
elections had been stolen. A Chaldean priest in Mosul,
in northern Iraq, told The Tablet there was deep
concern in Christian villages around the city about
the election process in which many villages seem not
to have received ballot boxes. Subsequently, it was
found that many voting papers had been filled in for
Kurdish parties in an alleged attempt to tip the
balance in the area’s power struggle between Sunni
Arabs and Kurds. Mosul, Iraq’s historic Christian
heartland, has the highest concentration of Chaldeans
outside Baghdad, and the Church fears becoming
disenfranchised in the area. 

Meanwhile, in Baghdad, Patriarch Emmanuel Delly III,
the head of Iraq’s 500,000-strong Chaldean Church,
welcomed the relatively peaceful completion of the
country’s first democratic elections for more than 50
years. “The will of the Iraqi people expressed
itself,” he said on Monday. “For this we thank God who
always wants what is good for his children.” 

Although the turn-out was low in strongly Sunni areas,
more than 8 million people are believed to have cast
their votes, with an average turn-out of nearly 60 per
cent. 

Despite the violence that still affects the country,
the patriarch was adamant that Iraqis “remain
optimistic about the future” because the situation “is
bound to improve”. 

Thomas Kingston, Iraqi Project Officer for the
International Centre for Reconciliation at Coventry
Cathedral, expressed relief at the relatively low
death count during polling. Despite increased security
and a day-long ban on most traffic, some 44 people
were killed last Sunday after insurgents carried out a
string of attacks and suicide bombings. “We expected
the death-toll to be in the hundreds and are pleased
there was not the bloodbath many feared,” he told The
Tablet. 

The elections were for a 275-member transitional
National Assembly that will eventually choose a new
government to elect the country’s president and prime
minister. Official results are not expected to be
announced until next week, but Iyad Allawi, the
interim prime minister, called for a spirit of
national unity and said there was no need for
minorities to fear marginalisation under what is
likely to be a Shia-dominated administration. Michael
Hirst 



	
	
		
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