Baghdad Residents Have High Expectations of New President

BAGHDAD, Iraq – With Iraq in turmoil and sectarian violence threatening to explode, Iraqis have expectations from their new president: they want him to guarantee security and keep Iraq together.

Last week, the Iraqi parliament elected Fuad Massoum as president under difficult political circumstances: Iraq is under a massive Sunni rebellion, jihadi militants have captured a third of the country and the Kurds have announced a planned referendum on independence from Iraq.

Massoum succeeds Jalal Talabani, another Kurd and a conciliatory figure for the largely ceremonial post, whose great skill was at getting quarreling parties to sit together for talks.

Marwa Hamed, 29 years old and a government employee in Baghdad, said she wanted to remind the president “to ensure the security and safety of the Iraqi Constitution, and that means maintaining the unity of Iraq's land and people as well as its natural resources, especially oil, which is the property of all Iraqis.”

She added: "The complex political developments produced by the current phase require the formation of a government that includes the national powers that support the national project.” She said it “must not include all the political blocs, a number of which are operating for regional agendas”

The president and parliament speaker, respectively a Kurd and Sunni, were elected by parliament a week. That still leaves the thorny question of the Shiite prime minister. Nouri al-Maliki is massively opposed by both the Sunnis and Kurds, but refuses to budge from his absolute insistence on staying for a third term.

Ninos Rafael, a Christian resident living in the Karrada district of central Baghdad, said that keeping Iraq together should be the president’s first priority.

“Haven’t we had enough suffering, destruction, killing, and displacement?”

Rafael said the president also must urgently help the Christians in Mosul, which the militant Islamic State (IS/ISIS) has declared the capital of its caliphate, and where it has reportedly especially targeted Christians. The majority have fled for the safety of the Kurdistan Region.

“Our numbers decrease daily. Many of us have been killed and displaced and we are still being targeted everywhere, so we call on the president to immediately intervene to save us,” he said.

One of Baghdad’s biggest problems is with Erbil, where the Kurds say they have had enough of Maliki and are planning an independence vote.

Mohammed al-Qaisi, 24, said that the president “must exercise his authority in addressing the existing problems between Erbil and Baghdad as soon as possible.”

Life for Sunnis and other non-Shiites has reportedly become increasingly worrisome in Baghdad, where secular murders and assassinations are reportedly on the rise. Shiite militias have rearmed in a big way to fight the IS.

In a speech on the occasion of Eid ul-Fitr, Massoum said: “We seek to form a national government based on national partnership as soon as possible and in accordance with the constitution.”  He said that tackling security was his first priority.