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All 37 seats for the Nineveh Governorate council | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Turnout | 60% (![]() | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Nineveh Governorate election of 2009 was held on 31 January 2009 alongside elections for all other governorates outside Iraqi Kurdistan and Kirkuk Governorate.
![]() | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (January 2009) |
Three seats on the council have been reserved for religious minorities: one for Christians, one for Yazidis and one for Shabak. [1]
In May 2008, arrest warrants were issued against a number of KDP council members who were accused of involvement in an assassination ring headed by the deputy leader of the KDP. The ring allegedly assassinated 900 people including a prominent Imam, two former senior officials of the Baath party, doctors and university professors. They were also accused of funnelled money and logistical help to al Qaeda in Iraq, in order to persuade the predominantly Arab residents to turn over security to the Kurdish Peshmerga. [2]
The main contest in Ninawa was between the incumbent Kurdish-backed governor and the al-Hadba party, formed by Sunni Arab tribal groups and backed by the Shiite Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki. [3] During the campaign the pro-Kurdish governor, Duraid Kashmoula, said he intended to leave Mosul, the city of his birth, after the election and retire to Kurdistan. [4]
Al-Hadba complained of being targeted by Kurdish security forces. [5] They accused the Kurdish parties of fraud in the 2005 election and, together with other non-Kurdish groups asked for federal troops to UN monitors to protect the voting centres. [6] A candidate for the Sunni Arab "Iraq for Us" coalition was killed by a gunman who walked into a cafe and shot him. [5] Just before the election another Sunni Arab candidate, this time from the National Unity List, was killed outside his home in Mosul. [7]
Al-Hadba called for the removal of Kurdish peshmerga forces from Ninawa, saying many of the province's insurgent groups would become law-abiding after that. [8] The Iraqi Islamic Party said the peshmerga should be replaced by the Iraqi Army within six months. [9]
Usama al-Najafi, a member of the Council of Representatives of Iraq and a supporter of the al-Hadba party, claimed that they had won 60% of the vote, with the Kurdish list gaining only 20%. [10]
After the election, reports claimed that Assyrians had been fired from their jobs because they were suspected of not voting for the pro-Kurdish Ishtar Patriotic List, which won the seat reserved for an Assyrian candidate. [11]
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Party | Votes | % | Seats | +/– | |
Al Hadba National List | 435,595 | 43.77 | 19 | +19 | |
Kurdistan Alliance | 273,458 | 27.48 | 12 | −19 | |
Iraqi Islamic Party | 60,191 | 6.05 | 3 | +1 | |
Al Mihrab Martyr List | 17,915 | 1.80 | 0 | −5 | |
Ishtar Patriotic List | 13,760 | 1.38 | 1 | +1 | |
Reserved Shabak seat | 12,949 | 1.30 | 1 | +1 | |
Reserved Yazidi seat | 6,174 | 0.62 | 1 | +1 | |
National Rafidain List | 6,144 | 0.62 | 0 | −1 | |
Other parties | 168,983 | 16.98 | 0 | – | |
Total | 995,169 | 100.00 | 37 | −4 | |
Source: Niqash, [12] Al Sumaria, New York Times |
Nineveh or Ninawa Governorate is a governorate in northern Iraq. It has an area of 37,323 km2 (14,410 sq mi) and an estimated population of 2,453,000 people as of 2003. Its largest city and provincial capital is Mosul, which lies across the Tigris river from the ruins of ancient Nineveh. Before 1976, it was called Mosul Province and included the present-day Dohuk Governorate. The second largest city is Tal Afar, which has an almost exclusively Turkmen population.
Human rights in post-invasion Iraq have been the subject of concerns and controversies since the 2003 U.S. invasion. Concerns have been expressed about conduct by insurgents, the U.S.-led coalition forces and the Iraqi government. The U.S. is investigating several allegations of violations of international and internal standards of conduct in isolated incidents by its own forces and contractors. The UK is also conducting investigations of alleged human rights abuses by its forces. War crime tribunals and criminal prosecution of the numerous crimes by insurgents are likely years away. In late February 2009, the U.S. State Department released a report on the human rights situation in Iraq, looking back on the prior year (2008).
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Osama Abdul Aziz al-Nujaifi or Najifi is an Iraqi politician and served as one of the three vice presidents of the country, from 2014 to 2015 and 2016 to 2018. As the speaker of the Council of Representatives, the informal leader of the moderate Sunni al-Hadba party was the highest ranking Sunni politician of Iraq.
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