IRAQ'S Christian parties complain they lack funding and are living in danger ahead of landmark parliamentary elections scheduled for January 30.

Already the victims of several church bombings since August, the country's 700,000 Christians, who make up just three per cent of Iraq's 26 million people, are struggling to get their message across.

"Governmental parties are able to reach out to the public through the media because they have greater financial resources," Odeesho Toma, a member of the Assyrian Patriotic Party, which is running o?n a coalition list with Kurdish parties, said. Because of its lack of financial clout, the party's Shara (the Truth) radio broadcasts in Kurdistan but its frequency has trouble making it to Baghdad.
"We have to hold meetings and symposiums for our people in the north to urge them to vote for the list we are part of," Toma said.

Even for parties with deeper pockets, like the Assyrian Democratic Movement, television advertising is too costly. "We are facing financial troubles and huge amounts of money are required if we want to make use of satellite TV stations in our campaign," head of the culture and information bureau in the Assyrian Democratic Movement, William Warda, said.

"Considering the fact that members of the next parliament will o?nly keep their posts for no longer than 11 months, it's not worth spending all that money." The few posters of Christian parties o?n display bear no symbols other than the map of Iraq.
"For a prosperous Iraq for the unity of our Chaldean-Syriac-Assyrian people, vote for list number 148 of the Democratic Coalition  of the Two Rivers", o?ne poster reads.

Another poster shows Iraq's map in white and the ancient symbol of a sun engulfing a star and two rivers springing near the northern, restive, city of Mosul in tribute to the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers.
Unlike big governmental parties, such as Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's Iraqi National Accord and the two main Kurdish parties, which have ample finance at their disposal, Christian groups, many of them newly formed, seem to be saving their pennies.

Except for the Assyrian Democratic Movement, the oldest and most powerful party that owns Ashour TV station and Ashour radio, Christian parties are using weekly newspapers and poorly-financed radio stations with restricted transmission ranges to reach out to the public.
Through our TV and radio, we are welcoming secular respectable figures like Ayad Jamal Addin, a well-known thinker and a Shiite candidate, or Adnan Pachachi, a prominent secular Sunni party leader" Warda, whose bureau runs Ashour TV and radio, said.

Church bombings in August resulted in the departure of as many as 40,000 Christians, according to official sources like Pascal Isho, the interim minister of Migration and Immigrants. Iraqi Christian expatriates are now estimated to number more than o?ne million. Some television stations run by Christian parties are working from abroad and apparently addressing Iraqi Christian communities there, like the Surayah TV of the Bethnarhain Patriotic Union based in Sweden and Assyrians based in Chicago.