Peaceful demo in Huweija demanding elections on time

by GottaDash Mon Jul 14, 2008 7:54 am

KIRKUK, July 14 (VOI) – Hundreds of Huweija residents on Monday staged a peaceful demonstration, calling on the government to hold Kirkuk's provincial council elections on time.

Almost 500 people participated in the peaceful march, which set off from downtown Huwieja through the district's provincial council building (60 km southwest of Kirkuk), where protesters submitted a letter detailing their demands to the council chief.
"The demonstrators reject the postponement of Kirkuk's provincial council elections, calling for dividing administration and authority in the city into 32 percent for each ethnicity: Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen, with 4 percent given to the city's minorities," the Huweija provincial council chief, Hussein Ali Saleh, told Aswat al-Iraq - Voices of Iraq - (VOI).
The law on provincial council elections, seen as supplementary to the law on regions and non-regional provinces, which was approved by the Parliament in February, has sparked heated controversy among political blocs.
The law specifies the system of government in Iraq, and if applied, a federal system may be established in the country with three separate regions, a call echoed by some Iraqi political parties.
The draft law on provincial council elections proposes an open slate system, which gives voters influence on the position of the candidates placed on the party list and allows an individual voting system.
Huweija district lies 70 km west of Kirkuk, the capital city of Kirkuk province, which lies 250 km northeast of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

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