Mosulians fear political tension effect on council’s performance

Mosul-Feature NINEWA / IraqiNews.com: Residents of Mosul city expressed their fear that the political tension after the formation of the new provincial council could affect its performance. “We took part in the elections hoping that the situation improves in the city; after the formation of the council a new stage of political tension started. We see that the security tension started to escalate in the province after the elections,” Hamed Saleem, 32, told IraqiNews.com news agency. Tension has escalated between al-Hadbaa and Ninewa Fraternal lists after the first announced forming the Ninewa provincial council, while the Kurdish list announced their withdrawal from the council in protest of the move. “This tension will affect the performance of the local council because it will restrict its time in tackling the security and services issues in the province,” Sallem added. On April 12, al-Hadbaa List distributed all key positions in Ninewa’s provincial council among its representatives, who secured 25 votes. The final results of the Ninewa provincial council elections, held on January 31, 2009, saw al-Hadbaa list winning 19 seats, followed by the Ninewa Fraternity list with 12 seats and the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) of Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi three seats as well as one seat for each of the Christians, the Shabaks and Yazidis. For his part, Mohamed Abdulqader, a 41-year-old employee, told IraqiNews.com news agency, that “al-Hadbaa list has the right to occupy all key positions in the province because it won the majority of votes.” “I believe that this tension will hamper the list from starting the reform process and fulfilling its promises to maintain security and provide services,” he also said. Ninewa suffers from a lack of security and services as well as the spread of unemployment, according to analysts. Emad al-Surji, 29, said “It is the right of the Ninewa Fraternal list to take the key positions because it represents Kurds and got the third of the seats.” The Ninewa Fraternal List includes seven parties; the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Islamic Union of Kurdistan, Kurdistan Communist Party, Iraqi Communist Party, the Assyrian Party, and Kurdistan Socialist Democratic Party. Meanwhile, Nashwan al-Hadethi, a political analyst, said that “what happened is a continuity of a former approach as the Ninewa Fraternal had not shared any positions with any lists in the councils which run them during the past four years.” On Wednesday (April 22), Kurdish Prime Minister Negervan Barzani had accused al-Hadbaa List of autocracy in Ninewa, adding other groups are not represented in the provincial council. The provincial council has 37 seats, according to the provincial council elections law approved last September. Mosul, the capital city of Ninewa, lies 405 km north of Baghdad. The original city of Mosul stands on the west bank of the Tigris River, opposite the ancient biblical city of Nineveh on the east bank, but the metropolitan area has now grown to encompass substantial areas on both banks, with five bridges linking the two sides. Despite having an amount of Kurdish population, it does not form part of the area controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government Kurdistan RegionG). SH (I)/SR 2