Nineveh council elects Mansour Marid as new governor

Rudaw
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The Nineveh Provincial Council elected Mansour Marid as its new governor on Monday.

He is from the Ataa Movement that confirmed the news. The 39-member provincial council voted him in with 28 votes. 

 

The political group is close to the Hashd al-Shaabi and Iraqi National Security Advisor Falah al-Fayyadh.

 

Marid is an engineer from southern Nineveh and an Iraqi MP, Ghazwan Dawoudi a member of the provincial council told Rudaw English. He was elected to the parliament as a member of former Primer Minister Haider al-Abadi's Nasr List.

Dawoudi added that Sirwan Mohammed, a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and pro-Kurdish Brotherhood List in Nineveh, secured the post of first deputy with 26 votes.


Marid was preceded by Nawfal Hamadi, who along with his deputies, were sacked following the Mosul ferry disaster that killed around 150 people. 


The vote was delayed by nearly a week as an Iraqi Federal Court decided on the fate of the previous governor and his deputies.

His predecessor, Atheel Nujaifi was Nineveh governor when ISIS overran Mosul in June 2014. Like his successor, Nujafi was also sacked by the Iraqi parliament.

Muqtada al-Sadr is an influential Shiite cleric whose alliance with the Communist Party in the Iraqi parliamentary election last year won his list the most seats.

"I am calling on the three presidencies especially the Presidency and the Council of Ministers to work to remove plights the people of Mosul are suffering from. They suffer from all the suppression from the so-called Nineveh Provincial Council..." Muqtada al-Sadr said in a tweet.  

Sadr is opposed to foreign interference and continuously criticizes the country's governance. 

"If you do not do anything, allow us to act and do something for its people per their demands," he added.

 

Nineveh is home to Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul. The province remains ravaged by the conflict with the Islamic State (ISIS) with more than 500,000 people still displaced from their homes, according to the International Organization for Migration. 

 

Nineveh, one of the most diverse areas in the Middle East is home to Sunni and Shiite Arabs, Kurds, Christians, Yezidis, Kakais, Shabaks, and other ethno-religious groups. 

 

The northern province contains territories which are disputed or Kurdistani and claimed by both Erbil and Baghdad.

 

Update: 3:45 p.m.