Dirty tricks in the Kurdish Election

The Change List here in the Behdinan areas, Duhok and Zakho, are not experiencing that people are feeling the same kind of excitement over the election as in Sulemaniya. People here are afraid. The Change List will not accept that people get hurt or loose their livelihoods in showing us their support. We are forced to work in diffrent ways. Instead of normal election campaigning our work is focused on spreading our message in a more quiet way than rallies and direct konfrontation with the Kurdistani List supporters.

The Change List are also trying to avoid being provoked by the Kurdistani List. We see that the Kurdistani List are using every dirty trick in the book. Not only are they trying to threat or bribe our supporters, they also are following us around, "spying" on us to see what we are up to and who are speaking to us. Another dirty trick is to provoke us in to making mistakes. When tomato throwing children were sent out to attack our caravan of cars July 13 large numbers of police were also waiting there for us. We have heard from a reliable source that the police were waiting for us to be provoked by these children. They were hoping that some of us should have jumped out of our cars. And they would have had us arrested on the spot.

But people are also getting angry now. The provocations of the Kurdistani List are not invisible for the people on the streets. When the Kurdistani List are trying to stop the Change List from campaigning in every way they can, they probably are digging their own graves...