The Iraqi parliament consists of 329 seats, the last nine seats are reserved for minorities, including five seats for the Christians. While the country is divided into 83 individual districts, voters-Christians and others-can vote for the five Christian seats anywhere in the country. This means the entire country is open only for those five seats.
Sami Awshwan, a Christian candidate running for Iraqi parliament in Nineveh on the ticket of the Hamurabi Alliance, told Rudaw's Ranj Circle - a program dedicated for election debates among candidates - that they remain fearful of interference in the seats reserved for Christians.
The five seats are reserved for Baghdad, Nineveh, Kirkuk, Erbil and Duhok - provinces where the majority of the country’s remaining Christians live.
"Hashd al-Shaabi will vote for their Christian candidate as they did in 2018," Awshwana claimed, referring the seat in Duhok the Babylon Movement, a party with negligible support in Duhok or within the Christian community.
The Babylon Movement, which also has an armed wing operating under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, or Hashd al-Shaabi in Arabic), won two seats in the last election in 2018. Rayan al-Kaldani, the Christian head of the movement, is sanctioned by the US treasury for human rights abuses and corruption.
Nasim Sadiq, a Christian writer, told the program aired on Tuesday night it is good that Christians have been given five seats at the Iraqi legislative body, but said that it hardly translated into real representation.
"They say it is your right, take it," Sadiq said. "They then take away that right, they steal the right from us," he added, referring to the Babylon Movement.
Christians have no real representation either in Iraq or Kurdistan Region when it comes to the parliament, the writer claimed, saying political parties in Kurdistan too interfere in the seats reserved for Christians.
"We don't have the right to select our real MPs," Sadiq said. "How can we then dream for other rights such as to have our own province dedicated for Christians in the Nineveh Plains."
More than a million Christians used to live in Iraq before the US invasion in 2003, but that number is now estimated to about 300,000 in 2021 because of sectarian violence and the ISIS war. Many have immigrated abroad, and many of those who remain have taken shelter in the Kurdistan Region.
"When ISIS came to Mosul and other areas. I ask where the Yazidis and Christians fled to?" Awshwana, the candidate said in response as he said there is a culture of coexistence in the Kurdistan Region. "They all came to Kurdistan. Why didn't they go to Baghdad, Basra or Tikrit?"
‘It is time for Yazidis to return home’
Yazidis have been reserved only one seat as part of the quota system. Yazidi voters are scattered across Nineveh, Duhok and as far as Erbil and Suleimani following the genocidal campaign by ISIS in 2014. Some remain in displacement camps.
Adil Shex Farman, an independent Yazidi candidate, said it was time for him to step in and run for the parliament, devoid of party affiliations.
"I want to place the stick in the middle," he said, referring to not taking sides between Erbil and Baghdad, who both claim the right to control disputed areas, including the Yazidi heartland of Shingal.
"We will be friends with everyone including Arabs and non-Arabs," he added while claiming tha some Yazidi MPs in the past have taken a strong stand against the Kurdistan Region, one that resulted in creating a "gap" between Yazidis and Kurdish parties.
Majid Jumaa, the sole candidate for the Kurdistan Communist Party in Nineveh, told the program he believes that if Erbil and Baghdad were keen enough, they would have had returned all Yazidis to their homes within "two months".
"It is now time for Yazidis to go back to Shingal...but neither side is serious about seeing our Yazidi people go back to Shingal," Jumaa claimed.
Sharif Sleman, a Yazidi candidate on the ticket of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), said they have done everything in their power for the Yazidis, but the problem is they have lost control over some Yazidi areas such as Shingal and Bashiqa since October 2017-when the Peshmerga withdrew from those areas after the failed Kurdish referendum.
Jumaa, the communist candidate, claimed the KDP is yet to be blamed for what happened in 2014 when hundreds of thousands of Yazidis - then under the control of the Kurdish Peshmerga - were left undefended following the ISIS onslaught.
"2014 is long gone. It is over," the KDP candidate responded, claiming that anything done for to benefit Yazidis, has always been done by the KDP.
Nineveh - an otherwise majority Sunni area - is the second-largest province in Iraq in terms of population with 34 seats up for grabs including three minority seats.
