Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Sako has urged his people to vote in Iraq’s elections, which will take place in October. He said that “previous elections were disappointing,” and the country needs stable political leadership.
Muqtada al-Sadr, an influential leader of Iraq’s Shi’ite Muslims, has also called for voter participation, reversing an earlier call to boycott the vote. Al-Sadr—whose paramilitary backers have been a major force in Iraqi politics—said that conditions for the elections are now “acceptable.”