By SIR
"The number of Iraqis wanting a country run by reason and law, rather than by confession or ethnic group, is increasing. They want a constitutional state, and this sounds like a very good thing”. While waiting for the announcement of the final results, which will most likely take place on March 26th, this is how mgr. Jean Benjamin Sleiman, archbishop of Baghdad of the Latins, comments with SIR the vote of 7th March in Iraq. The count, which is now at 95% of the total, is now seeing the outgoing prime minister Nuri al Maliki and Yyad Allawi in a neck-and-neck situation, with the former faring slightly better than the latter. “The appeals to laicism in the run-up to the voting – the prelate explains – have been heeded, not least because a certain kind of bond between religion and politics bore no fruits, in social, economic and cultural terms. The innovation of the vote lies also in the variety of tickets that run for the election”. A variety that, however, according to mgr. Sleiman, “also led to the political fragmentation of the Christians that might have been avoided”.
Whatever the final result the count will guarantee, the Latin archbishop adds, “the new Parliament and the new Government will have to stop the massacre of Christians, which is mainly happening in Mosul, by finding who instigates and who commits such crimes. The State must do something, and, if it cannot, then it must ask someone else to do that. It is unacceptable that people are killed like this”. A lay Government is also wished for by the Chaldean archbishop of Mosul, mgr. Emil Shimoun Nona, who, during an interview with SIR about the forthcoming Easter celebrations, invited the “city authorities to give news about the reasons for such violence against us, and about the investigations into the crimes committed against our community, which is losing confidence in the State”.
