Arabs Gain in North Iraq, Low Voter Turn-out for Assyrians

Nineveh, Iraq – AINA — Yesterday’s provincial elections in Iraq’s Nineveh province and its insurgency-struck capital Mosul gave the chance to Sunni Arabs to reclaim their influence in a province where they are the majority.

Preliminary results indicate the Sunnis now have a majority of seats in the new provincial council. The political imbalance which resulted from the Sunni boycott in the previous elections in this contested province has changed, and Kurds have now gone from the majority to the minority block.

The preliminary results for minorities in the province show a very low voter turnout, around 30 percent for the Assyrians. In the largest Assyrian town in the Nineveh plain, Al Hamdanya, more than 20,000 eligible voters — nearly 70 percent — did not participate in the elections despite an excellent security situation.

“Our people have lost hope in the political process, Assyrians no longer see any meaning in participating after the way they were treated in the Iraqi parliament,” says Basem Ballo, head of the Tellkaif district in the Nineveh Plain, referring to the removal of Article 50 from Iraq’s constitution, which guaranteed seats for minorities in provincial councils.1

At the same time, reports indicate many of the Assyrians who did participate in the elections did so out of fear of losing food aid and security services. The pro-Kurdish Ishtar slate has been accused by Assyrians in the Nineveh province of using the threat of loss of aid and security to force Assyrians to vote for it. In the town of Al Hamdanya the political group behind the Ishtar slate employs more than 1000 guards.

In the run up to the elections, the guards were told they would loose their jobs if they and their families did not vote for the Ishtar slate. Officials also warned people that they would monitor the voters to see whom they voted for, instilling fear in a population largely unfamiliar with the procedures and secrecy of voting.