On February 21, 2024, the Federal Court issued its decision numbered 83 and its federated units 131 and 185 / 2023, regarding the parliamentary elections of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. After several meetings among the leadership of our national parties, during the past period and the issuance of the statement of the six parties on February 27, 2024, regarding the decision, in which we pointed out at the time that our people (the Chaldean Syriac Assyrian) have paid the price of political conflicts over quota seats between influential parties and attempts to manipulate parliamentary representation of our people in favor of partisan and sectarian interests outside the national framework. The Federal Supreme Court in Iraq took the easiest path to solve the problem presented to it by canceling a component and an indigenous people’s representation in parliament, thereby bypassing constitutional provisions in a step considered a setback from the democratic process and a retreat from the principles of political, national, and societal partnership adopted by the Iraqi state after 2003, and in the Kurdistan Region since 1991.
Therefore, our parties have decided to boycott the parliamentary elections of the Kurdistan Region scheduled for June 10, 2024, thus affirming their rejection of the imposed reality on our people through the decision of the Federal Court issued on February 21, 2024, and the failure to amend the election law and restrict voting within the component. Our boycott of these elections strips the decision of all political legitimacy derived from the integration of the pillars of the political process, which today lacks a fundamental pillar embodied in the representation of national components in the legislative authority in the region, and this is a violation of many provisions of the effective Iraqi Republic Constitution.
We also affirm that any individual who reaches parliament through the general lists does not represent our people, and we are not bound by their positions or policies; rather, they are part of the political agendas brought to parliament. The boycott position of these elections also comes to preserve the national gains of our people, which resulted from struggles and great sacrifices during the past decades and confronting the dictatorial regime. The national rights of our Chaldean Syriac Assyrian people are natural rights written with the blood of martyrs and the wounded, and the tears of thousands who were displaced, and their villages destroyed and burned in the Anfal operations in 1988, and those who fell victim to the bloody dictatorship and lost their lives and all they owned.
Our national rights are not a gift from any party to give or take away as they please.
Erbil
13 March, 2024
Signatories:
1/Assyrian Democratic Movement
2/Beth Nahrain Patriotic Union
3/Chaldean Syriac Assyrian Popular Council
4/Abnaa Al Nahrain Party
5/Assyrian Patriotic Party
6/ Bet-Nahrain Democratic Party