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Iraqi Christian
Voters Hope for Security
Jan 30, 05
By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Edward Ishak Shamoun
cast his ballot Sunday as a rebuke to the insurgents and as a
vote for a peaceful future.
"We see voting as the main road
to security," said Shamoun, a member of Iraq (news - web
sites )'s tiny Christian minority. "We want a strong government
and I hope that Iraq will soon be a secure place. We came here
to defy the terrorists."
Shamoun, his wife and dozens of other
Christians came to Nidhamiyah High School for Boys to vote for
a 275-member National Assembly and Baghdad's provincial council.
Most said they backed the ticket headed by interim Prime Minister
Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite Muslim.
They considered other tickets, such
as one endorsed by the Shiite clerical hierarchy, to be too closely
identified with religious groups even though top Muslim leaders
disavowed any talk of establishing a clerical government in Iraq.
For Munira Boulos, a Christian housewife
who arrived with her son Amer, 20, a vote for Allawi meant "choosing
a strong leader who does not differentiate between Iraqis of
any religion."
Allawi promised during his campaign
that if he remained prime minister after the election, he would
concentrate on ending the 21-month-old insurgency that has killed
thousands of people and on reviving the economy.
Iskandar Bahnam, a 71-year-old Assyrian
Christian, was determined to cast his vote despite physical frailties
and poor eyesight.
After saying he was too tired to stand
in a voting booth, he was allowed to sit in a chair and mark
his ballot. He complained he could not see the fine print. "I
want list 285" - Allawi's group of candidates. A poll worker
showed him where to mark the ballot.
"That was a good and easy vote.
In the past I used to participate, but you know how it was,"
Bahnam said, referring to past elections in which Saddam Hussein
(news - web sites) claimed he got nearly all the votes.
The local polling director, Basil Saadi,
said 65 percent of the 3,000 registered voters at his station
in central Baghdad were Christians. During a reporter's visit
at midafternoon, he said about 1,600 of them had voted so far.
Christians, mainly Chaldean-Assyrians
and Armenians, make up just 3 percent of Iraq's 26 million people.
Iraqi officials estimate as many as
15,000 Christians have left the country since August, when four
churches in Baghdad and one in the northern city of Mosul were
attacked in coordinated car bombings that killed 12 people and
injured 61. Another church was bombed in Baghdad in September.
Shamoun Boulos noted that in elections
during Saddam's reign, the regime routinely had the president
winning with 99 percent of the votes.
"This is the first time I vote
totally free. Today is the birthday of a new state in Iraq,"
he said.
Asked if the violence aimed at Christians
had him thinking of leaving, Boulos replied: "Not at all."
"We were here even before Islam,"
he said. "This is our land and we will stay here."
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