Preachers must encourage citizens to vote – Sunni leader

NINEWA / IraqiNews.com: The Ninewa Sunni Endowment director on Thursday urged the mosque imams and preachers to encourage local residents to participate and vote in the provincial council elections, scheduled to be held late this month. “Imams and preachers have good impressions on the man in the street in the city of Mosul and must urge the local citizens to go to the ballot stations to cast their votes,” Sheikh Mohammed Abdelwahab al-Shamaa told IraqiNews.com news agency. Mosul, the capital city of Ninewa province, lies 405 km north of Baghdad. Ninewa was ranked first in the process of updating records of voters who are to elect their representatives in the local council in the province, where 32 lists offering 409 candidates are vying over 37 seats. The elections will be held on January 31. According to Abdelkhaleq al-Dabbagh, the chief of the Iraqi Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC)’s Ninewa office, the number of voters who participated in the process of updating their data was 575, 543, the highest ever among Iraqi provinces. Ninewa is inhabited by an Arab Sunni majority that boycotted legislative elections in 2005. AmR (P) 1