Iraqi exile voters
put Chaldo-Assyrian Christian in Iraqi assembly
By Susannah A. Nesmith
Knight Ridder Newspapers
BAGHDAD, Iraq -Yonadam Kanna owes his
seat in the new Iraqi National Assembly to people from places
such as Detroit and San Jose, Calif., who voted for his slate
in the Jan. 30 elections.
Without the 18,538 votes he received
from expatriates, Kanna's slate would have been about 12,000
votes short of the number required to secure a seat in the assembly.
Though more than 260,000 expatriates voted, Kanna's National
Two Rivers slate is one of only three that received more than
half their votes from abroad, and it's the only one that owes
its seat on the assembly to expatriate votes.
Kanna said that isn't surprising:
Generations of persecution sent many of his constituents into
exile. The Two Rivers slate represents the Chaldo-Assyrians,
a small Christian minority here that speaks a modern-day version
of Aramaic, the language of Jesus.
Kanna insists that his slate would have
received more votes if it weren't for alleged voting irregularities.
But, flawed though it may be, Iraq's nascent democracy is an
important improvement over the past, he said.
"There were a lot of irregularities
everywhere - we were expecting 10 or 12 seats - but still we
are happy because the democratic process has begun," Kanna
said, sitting in his office in a vast compound once occupied
by a brutal security force run by one of Saddam Hussein's sons.
The irony of his office location delights
Kanna, who said he was twice sentenced to death for opposing
Saddam's regime.
"Three hundred thousand criminals
trained here," he said. "There are torture rooms here."
Kanna recounted stories of family members
killed, Christian churches and monasteries burned and villages
destroyed during Saddam's "faith campaign" in the 1990s.
A member of Iraq's exiled opposition
for years, Kanna's eager to begin governing and has already engaged
in Iraq's post-election political horse-trading.
He's hoping to barter his lone vote
for the protection of his community by working with the new opposition
led by interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi to block a constitution
based on Islamic law. The slate that took the most seats, about
140, was blessed by a conservative Shiite Muslim cleric and has
ties to the fundamentalist regime in Iran, but many here think
it won't have a big enough majority in the 275-seat assembly
to form a religious-based government.
Kanna's constituents in San Jose are
proud that they helped put him in a position where he may be
able to help prevent that. But they too are concerned that many
Chaldo-Assyrians were prevented from voting, either because polling
stations abroad were too far from their homes - a common complaint
that crosses ethnic and religious lines - or because of irregularities
in Ninevah province, where the Chaldo-Assyrian community is strongest.
"We're happy to have a representative
in the new assembly, but at the same time we're very much disappointed
in the turnout," said Firas Jatou, director of an information-technology
firm in San Jose. "It's understandable for Baghdad not to
have a large turnout. I have relatives in Baghdad who opted not
to vote out of fear. However, here in the U.S. we were hoping
for better."
He said the distance of the polling
stations prevented many from voting. He and his wife traveled
16 hours round-trip to register in Irvine, south of Los Angeles,
and another 16 hours later in the week to vote.
"At least we can speak out about
the injustices, whereas in the past, under Saddam, you would
be taken away," he said.
Kanna's Michigan constituents have equally
mixed feelings about his victory.
"We feel successful that we have
one person who is representing us," said Dr. Joseph Kassab,
an instructor at Wayne State University in Detroit and the president
of the Chaldean National Congress. The group mounted an aggressive
get-out-the-vote campaign and provided buses to bring voters
in the United States to distant polling centers. "But the
people who went and voted, the number was very anemic."
Kassab estimates that about 6,000 of
the approximately 10,000 Iraqis who voted in Michigan were Chaldo-Assyrians.
That number couldn't be verified, but if true it would mean that
Kanna's Michigan constituents alone pushed his slate into the
National Assembly. U.S. Census figures show there are 51,000
Chaldo-Assyrians in the United States, about 30,000 of them in
the Detroit metropolitan area.
"We are underrepresented, but this
is the first step towards democracy," Kassab said.
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