A low turnout for the Christians of Iraq and abroad for the 2010 Iraqi parliament elections

 Ankawa.com – Exclusive
Observers for the Iraqi elections, that took place on Sunday the 7th of March 2010, described the participation of Christian inside and outside Iraq as “weak”. The results of the unofficial final count indicated the win of two lists: Al-Rafedain 389 of the Assyrian Democratic Movement and the People Council 390 of Chaldean Assyrian Syriac that is close to the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
  Observers said, the participation rate of Christians in Iraq did not exceed 40% which is much less than the overall 62% of participation of Iraqis in the elections, that declared by the Commission.
  Observers attributed the cause of the low turnout of Christian’s voters as due to their bad security situations, especially with regard to the Christians of Mosul and what happened to them during the few days before the elections. The situation included threats and murders on their religious identity, in addition to their right of the quota that would qualify them to get 5 seats in the new parliament regardless of the number of voters, the lack of electoral rolls for a large of the names of the displaced Christians who have fled to the safer villages and towns and therefore deprived their right to vote.
  The participation rate of Christians outside Iraq was not better than that of home. According to the sources to the site of ankawa.com, from a number of polling stations in countries were the elections took place, they noted the lack of Christian’s voters in comparison to the high level of participation by the Iraqi Arabs and Kurds.
  The observers stress the reason for that to the bad situation for the Christians in Mosul and its impact on the Christians in other areas inside and outside Iraq. The bad situation is due to the continued terrorist attacks against Christians in Mosul which increased during the last two months and killing many of them forced hundreds of families, are estimated as thousands of its members, to immigrate to the Kurdistan region and nearby safer towns in Nineveh plain.
  In the same context, preliminary results of the unofficial count referred to the winning of the two lists: the People Council and Al-Rafedain on the rest of the Christian’s lists. This did not prevent the winning of other Iraqi lists in the Christian towns in Nineveh plain, such as the Union of People for the Communist Party, the Iraqi list led by the politician Aiad Allawy and other independent Christian figures.
  Observers expect that the distribution of the 5 seats allocated to Christian will be among the two winner lists, although there are views of talking about the possibility of a “Weak” access for the list of Chaldean National Council for a seat in the parliament in the event of winning large number of votes in the state of Michigan in USA which inhabited by a large Iraqi Chaldean community.
  Meanwhile, will begin next Thursday, March 11, the process of sorting and counting of the 16 offices that were the Independent High Electoral Commission for elections have opened in 16 countries endemic many Iraqis.
  The Independent High Commission for the elections estimated the number of Iraqi voters by 19 million voters which they have the right in 2010 to vote for the election of the Iraqi Council of representative that composed of 325 seats.