Iraq’s Christians: a fraught journey of political representation
16 Oct 2025
The presence of Christians in Iraq dates back to the first century AD. Today they receive parliamentary representation through quota seats, yet even these seats are subject to polarisation and contestation.
In an Iraq exhausted by decades of wars and sectarianism, elections are rarely a purely democratic moment. They often become a fresh announcement of a race not free of deceit: another circumvention of ballot boxes that are supposed to reflect the will free voters but frequently express the will of parties skilled at sharing roles, recycling faces, and tailoring balances to their influence.
With the countdown to parliamentary elections scheduled for 11 November 2025, this picture is becoming clearer. Large and small Iraqi blocs are locked in a feverish race for seats in parliament — not out of love for legislation, but to gain a wider foothold in ministries, state bodies, and affiliated formations.
Thus parliament becomes a gateway to spoils; elections turn into a means rather than an end; and the unspoken motto reads: ‘The end justifies the means’.
Behind this familiar tableau lies a quieter struggle no less fierce.
It is a struggle over the ‘minorities’ quota, specifically for Christians, which — under the election law — comprises five parliamentary seats distributed across Baghdad, Nineveh, Kirkuk, Dohuk, and Erbil.
Although these seats account for no more than 1.5 percent of all parliamentary seats, they represent an important political entry point in the balance of power. Major blocs invest in them to expand influence and cement alliances, even at the expense of the independence of the community those seats are meant to represent.
Since 2003, Iraq’s election law has not succeeded in freeing parliamentary representation from the spectre of sectarian and communal apportionment. On the contrary, this logic was entrenched by Legislative Decision No. 44 of 2008 — specifically Article 6 — which legalised sectarian quotas under the pretext of implementing what was agreed upon by the different political groups.
Although the Federal Supreme Court overturned that article in a clear decision on 14 October 2019, its effects have remained visible in election laws, office allocations, and even minority representation.
An ancient presence
To speak of Christians in Iraq is not to invoke a latecomer sect or a subsidiary component; it is to speak of one of the country’s oldest religious communities. Their presence dates to the first century AD following the evangelical mission led by Mar Addai in Mesopotamia, Persia, and Syria. His disciple, Mar Mari, founded the Church of the East in Al-Madaʾin, the Sasanian capital.
This deep-rooted presence was documented by historian Raphael Babu Ishaq in the History of the Christians of Iraq, published in 1948 by Al-Mansur Press in Baghdad.
The concentration of Christians in northern Iraq is not the product of a passing circumstance. It reflects a long, cumulative search for survival amid a turbulent political and social environment. The rugged mountain terrain — in Dohuk, Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, and Nineveh — offered a geographical shield that limited the reach of aggressors and provided a natural refuge from waves of targeting and attacks across the ages.
The mountains, in their roughness and remoteness, have long acted as an unspoken ally of Christian communities, preserving villages from erasure, and forming a safety belt for identity, keeping its pulse even as numbers dwindled. The north was not merely a place to live; it was a place to remain.
From their earliest presence, Christians in Iraq faced grave challenges and, over successive eras, endured a series of hostile assaults from varied actors and epochs, differing in nature, motives, and methods. Some took a zealously religious form; others were driven by authoritarian political aims to constrain diversity and impose a singular identity on the public sphere.
The threat has persisted even in times of apparent stability. Moments of transition or chaos can turn coexistence into fragility and guarantees into mirages.
With each wave of targeting, many have left for the diaspora, while others tie their belonging to the land rather than the moment. They resist migration, endure violence, and carry on — heirs not merely to an old dwelling, but to an entire history.
From the early formation of the modern Iraqi state, population statistics revealed the country’s religious and ethnic distribution, with Christians visibly present in the official figures.
In the first census in 1927, they numbered about 88,000; in 1934, about 97,000; in 1947, more than 149,000; and by 1957 they exceeded 204,000 — out of a total population of 6,296,000-plus, an estimated 3.24 percent.
What stands out is not merely the gradual increase, but the relative demographic stability of this community through the first half of the twentieth century — a period not free of challenges, yet one that, relatively, allowed natural social and cultural growth and consolidated their position as the largest among non-Muslim faith communities.
This statistical presence testified to social cohesion that did not necessarily translate into commensurate political representation. It nonetheless laid a numerical foundation showing that Christians were never marginal, but an active number within Iraq’s demographic fabric — before major numerical decline set in over subsequent decades.
The second-largest community
Christians were never numerically close to the Muslim majority, yet they have long remained the largest among other religious minorities — exceeding the numbers of the Mandaeans, Yazidis, Jews, and other smaller communities.
While seemingly a numeric fact, this also carries political, social, and cultural weight. It counters narratives that reduce Christians to symbolism or token representation. They have formed the country’s second largest religious community — not only in numbers but also in impact, participation in the national fabric, and contributions to state-building.
Even so, this standing did not convert into political or administrative representation proportionate to their historical and social weight. Successive versions of the state dealt with them symbolically — at times integrating them superficially, at others excluding them in practice. Between these poles, Christians have held to their original place as an active, not subordinate, component.
Christian presence in public life extended beyond social and cultural realms into politics from the state’s early phases — even under Ottoman rule. Dawud Afandi Yusufani, a Christian politician born in Mosul in 1854, embodied an early stage of political awareness and a living example of engagement with the public scene despite sectarian and administrative complexities.
He moved from teaching to the judiciary, then became an MP for Mosul in the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies after the 1908 elections — the apex of representative institutions in the empire — remaining as a member until 1914. His entry was not a lone exception but a sign of advanced political consciousness in a community that chose participation over isolation.
After the British Mandate was proclaimed on 25 April 1920, the lineaments of the modern state began to form amid broad popular mobilisation in Baghdad. Crowds demanded a national Iraqi congress to determine the system of rule, affirm rights and freedoms, lift martial law, and end British control — demands that later coalesced in the 1920 Revolt, which altered Iraq’s trajectory.
Amid these events, a Royal Decree on 19 October 1922 established the Iraqi Constituent Assembly, which convened on 27 March 1924 with 100 members. King Faisal I attended and delivered an address stressing the need to enact a constitution and a law for electing deputies.
Despite political missteps, the Assembly passed the 1925 Iraqi Basic Law. Article 36 states: “The Chamber of Deputies shall be composed by election at the rate of one deputy for every twenty thousand male inhabitants”. Article 37 adds: “The method of electing deputies shall be determined by a special law, observing the principles of secret ballot and the need to ensure representation of non-Muslim minorities”. Thus Christians obtained four seats — two for Mosul, one for Baghdad, and one for Basra — the first constitutional embodiment of non-Muslim representation in Iraq’s modern history.
A timid return
With the overthrow of the monarchy on 14 July 1958, Iraq entered a new phase of national liberation rhetoric, social justice, and openness. Yet the republic’s first five years saw sharp divisions within the Christian community, security turbulence, and indirect targeting of some figures — weakening their political representation and shrinking their parliamentary influence.
Under the Baath (1968 – 2003), Christian representation came under intense security control. The regime subjected all communities to tight monitoring and allowed no independent Christian voice in parliament or government, preferring to showcase selected Christian figures as a ‘civilised face’ of the regime.
In April 2003, the regime fell — along with the central state structure — and a new political order arose on openly sectarian and ethnic grounds. In July the same year, the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council was formed, including only one Christian, Yonadam Kanna — a representation that seemed more like political tokenism than fair recognition of a historic community.
With the 2005 Constitution, many believed Iraq was moving towards a civic, citizenship-based state. Article 14 states that “Iraqis are equal before the law without discrimination due to gender, ethnicity, nationality, origin, colour, religion, sect, belief or opinion, or economic or social status”. Article 20 affirms that “citizens, men and women, shall have the right to participate in public affairs and enjoy political rights including voting, elections, and candidacy”.
Yet Article 49(1) reads: “The Council of Representatives shall consist of a number of members at a ratio of one seat per one hundred thousand Iraqi persons, representing the entire Iraqi people. They shall be elected by direct, secret, general ballot, with the representation of all components of the people ensured”. Its ambiguity has opened the door to entrenching religious and ethnic quotas, turning minorities into ‘political shares’ parceled out among blocs.
Subsequent election laws — especially Law No. 4 of 2023 (the third amendment to Law No. 12 of 2018 on elections for the Council of Representatives and provincial councils) — set the Christian quota at five seats, distributed across Baghdad, Nineveh, Kirkuk, Erbil, and Dohuk, overlooking their presence in other governorates.
A bargaining chip
The Christian quota has not been spared the post 2003 political polarisation. At one point it turned into an open contest among the Church, certain political figures, and dominant parties whose agendas extend beyond the community itself.
In a sharp public statement, Cardinal Louis Raphaël Sako, Patriarch of the Chaldean Church in Iraq and worldwide, accused Rayan al-Kildani, leader of the Babylon Movement, of “seizing the Christian quota seats” and “taking over the Ministry of Migration and Displacement as if it were reserved for the Christian community.”
Sako went further, claiming that al-Kildani had tried to control the Christian Endowment and Christian properties in Baghdad, Nineveh, and the Nineveh Plain, and that he had “bought off Christian clergy with the help of a woman he appointed as minister” — a reference to the Minister of Migration and Displacement, Evan Faeq Yakoub.
Rayan al-Kildani responded quickly. In an official statement, he said:
“With deep regret and astonishment, we read Open Letter No. 160, dated 15 July 2023, which Patriarch Sako addressed to the President, the Prime Minister, and the Christian and Iraqi people, announcing his departure from the patriarchal residence in Baghdad to a monastery in the Kurdistan Region, fleeing the Iraqi judiciary in cases brought against him.”
He added: “We are a political movement, not brigades. We participate in the political process as part of the State Administration Coalition. The decision to withdraw the decree from him was issued by the Presidency, not by us, to correct a constitutional error.”
On 7 July 2023, the Iraqi Presidency issued a clarifying statement, saying that the revocation of Republican Decree No. 147 of 2013 — which had appointed Cardinal Sako as Patriarch and custodian of the community’s endowments — did not affect his religious standing, since he was appointed by the Holy See, not by a state decree. The Presidency explained that the earlier decree lacked legal basis and that other heads of denominations had requested similar decrees, prompting its cancellation to correct the situation.
The crisis of the Christian quota has gone beyond suspicions of capture by powerful parties to include outright exclusion of candidates who won Christian votes.
Amid such concerns, many Christians find themselves confronting a political reality of marginalisation and exclusion, not only from office but from fair representation itself.
According to journalist and political analyst Basel Boulos: “The number of Christians in Iraq before 2003 exceeded one and a half million. In Baghdad alone there were more than five hundred thousand. Today it is no exaggeration to say we have become a small-numbered component”.
Boulos adds: “The term ‘minority’ was never fitting for us, but many Christians accepted it reluctantly because some international conventions grant minorities special protection. Sadly, even that protection never reached us. There were no guarantees of existence, no justice in representation, and no respect for the component’s particularity”.
According to him: “Under the current election law, the number of seats allocated to Christians is five, versus 324 seats for everyone else. Those occupying the five cannot deliver much for Christians. Worse, attempts by some political actors to seize those seats mean they no longer represent Christians at all, but a given political force”.
For his part, Dr Rahman Al-Jebouri, head of the Rasheed Academy for Political and Governmental Development, explains: “Voters who are Christians should be allowed to vote for their Christian candidates within a special roll separated from the rolls of other Iraqis, so the scenario of falsifying their will is not repeated”.
Writer and political researcher Kifah Mahmoud argues that the root of the problem lies not only in legal formulas but in the prevailing political culture. “In developed countries”, he explains, “people no longer define themselves on a religious, sectarian, or ethnic basis, but as citizens. In advanced societies, religious differences have dissolved into a civil state that respects all equally”.
Iraq’s reality remains far from that model. Sub-identities continue to steer politics and are clearly reflected in how minorities are represented.
The crisis of Christian representation in the Council of Representatives, via the quota system, reveals a deep flaw in the architecture of political representation for minorities and reflects a wider problem: the overlap of party dominance with electoral processes.
Although the quota system was designed to guarantee representation for all components of Iraqi society, direct interventions by major political forces, doubts over voting mechanisms, and the instrumentalisation of minority seats have turned it into a tool of bargaining and apportionment rather than a mechanism of representation and fairness.
Iraq’s Christians — among the country’s oldest components — face a double challenge: shrinking numbers due to migration and targeting, and diminishing real representation in politics. This plays out through confining their candidacies to only five governorates and through the arrival of candidates who lack support within the Christian base itself.
As it stands, the Christian quota does not necessarily reflect the will of the community so much as the will of surrounding forces. This calls for a re-evaluation of the representational system to ensure that a mechanism intended for redress does not become a new pathway to marginalisation — within a political landscape still governed by sectarianism and intersecting loyalties.
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In an Iraq exhausted by decades of wars and sectarianism, elections are rarely a purely democratic moment. They often become a fresh announcement of a race not free of deceit: another circumvention of ballot boxes that are supposed to reflect the will free voters but frequently express the will of parties skilled at sharing roles, recycling faces, and tailoring balances to their influence.
With the countdown to parliamentary elections scheduled for 11 November 2025, this picture is becoming clearer. Large and small Iraqi blocs are locked in a feverish race for seats in parliament — not out of love for legislation, but to gain a wider foothold in ministries, state bodies, and affiliated formations.
Thus parliament becomes a gateway to spoils; elections turn into a means rather than an end; and the unspoken motto reads: ‘The end justifies the means’.
Behind this familiar tableau lies a quieter struggle no less fierce.
It is a struggle over the ‘minorities’ quota, specifically for Christians, which — under the election law — comprises five parliamentary seats distributed across Baghdad, Nineveh, Kirkuk, Dohuk, and Erbil.
Although these seats account for no more than 1.5 percent of all parliamentary seats, they represent an important political entry point in the balance of power. Major blocs invest in them to expand influence and cement alliances, even at the expense of the independence of the community those seats are meant to represent.
Since 2003, Iraq’s election law has not succeeded in freeing parliamentary representation from the spectre of sectarian and communal apportionment. On the contrary, this logic was entrenched by Legislative Decision No. 44 of 2008 — specifically Article 6 — which legalised sectarian quotas under the pretext of implementing what was agreed upon by the different political groups.
Although the Federal Supreme Court overturned that article in a clear decision on 14 October 2019, its effects have remained visible in election laws, office allocations, and even minority representation.
An ancient presence
To speak of Christians in Iraq is not to invoke a latecomer sect or a subsidiary component; it is to speak of one of the country’s oldest religious communities. Their presence dates to the first century AD following the evangelical mission led by Mar Addai in Mesopotamia, Persia, and Syria. His disciple, Mar Mari, founded the Church of the East in Al-Madaʾin, the Sasanian capital.
This deep-rooted presence was documented by historian Raphael Babu Ishaq in the History of the Christians of Iraq, published in 1948 by Al-Mansur Press in Baghdad.
The concentration of Christians in northern Iraq is not the product of a passing circumstance. It reflects a long, cumulative search for survival amid a turbulent political and social environment. The rugged mountain terrain — in Dohuk, Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, and Nineveh — offered a geographical shield that limited the reach of aggressors and provided a natural refuge from waves of targeting and attacks across the ages.
The mountains, in their roughness and remoteness, have long acted as an unspoken ally of Christian communities, preserving villages from erasure, and forming a safety belt for identity, keeping its pulse even as numbers dwindled. The north was not merely a place to live; it was a place to remain.
From their earliest presence, Christians in Iraq faced grave challenges and, over successive eras, endured a series of hostile assaults from varied actors and epochs, differing in nature, motives, and methods. Some took a zealously religious form; others were driven by authoritarian political aims to constrain diversity and impose a singular identity on the public sphere.
The threat has persisted even in times of apparent stability. Moments of transition or chaos can turn coexistence into fragility and guarantees into mirages.
With each wave of targeting, many have left for the diaspora, while others tie their belonging to the land rather than the moment. They resist migration, endure violence, and carry on — heirs not merely to an old dwelling, but to an entire history.
From the early formation of the modern Iraqi state, population statistics revealed the country’s religious and ethnic distribution, with Christians visibly present in the official figures.
In the first census in 1927, they numbered about 88,000; in 1934, about 97,000; in 1947, more than 149,000; and by 1957 they exceeded 204,000 — out of a total population of 6,296,000-plus, an estimated 3.24 percent.
What stands out is not merely the gradual increase, but the relative demographic stability of this community through the first half of the twentieth century — a period not free of challenges, yet one that, relatively, allowed natural social and cultural growth and consolidated their position as the largest among non-Muslim faith communities.
This statistical presence testified to social cohesion that did not necessarily translate into commensurate political representation. It nonetheless laid a numerical foundation showing that Christians were never marginal, but an active number within Iraq’s demographic fabric — before major numerical decline set in over subsequent decades.
The second-largest community
Christians were never numerically close to the Muslim majority, yet they have long remained the largest among other religious minorities — exceeding the numbers of the Mandaeans, Yazidis, Jews, and other smaller communities.
While seemingly a numeric fact, this also carries political, social, and cultural weight. It counters narratives that reduce Christians to symbolism or token representation. They have formed the country’s second largest religious community — not only in numbers but also in impact, participation in the national fabric, and contributions to state-building.
Even so, this standing did not convert into political or administrative representation proportionate to their historical and social weight. Successive versions of the state dealt with them symbolically — at times integrating them superficially, at others excluding them in practice. Between these poles, Christians have held to their original place as an active, not subordinate, component.
Christian presence in public life extended beyond social and cultural realms into politics from the state’s early phases — even under Ottoman rule. Dawud Afandi Yusufani, a Christian politician born in Mosul in 1854, embodied an early stage of political awareness and a living example of engagement with the public scene despite sectarian and administrative complexities.
He moved from teaching to the judiciary, then became an MP for Mosul in the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies after the 1908 elections — the apex of representative institutions in the empire — remaining as a member until 1914. His entry was not a lone exception but a sign of advanced political consciousness in a community that chose participation over isolation.
After the British Mandate was proclaimed on 25 April 1920, the lineaments of the modern state began to form amid broad popular mobilisation in Baghdad. Crowds demanded a national Iraqi congress to determine the system of rule, affirm rights and freedoms, lift martial law, and end British control — demands that later coalesced in the 1920 Revolt, which altered Iraq’s trajectory.
Amid these events, a Royal Decree on 19 October 1922 established the Iraqi Constituent Assembly, which convened on 27 March 1924 with 100 members. King Faisal I attended and delivered an address stressing the need to enact a constitution and a law for electing deputies.
Despite political missteps, the Assembly passed the 1925 Iraqi Basic Law. Article 36 states: “The Chamber of Deputies shall be composed by election at the rate of one deputy for every twenty thousand male inhabitants”. Article 37 adds: “The method of electing deputies shall be determined by a special law, observing the principles of secret ballot and the need to ensure representation of non-Muslim minorities”. Thus Christians obtained four seats — two for Mosul, one for Baghdad, and one for Basra — the first constitutional embodiment of non-Muslim representation in Iraq’s modern history.
A timid return
With the overthrow of the monarchy on 14 July 1958, Iraq entered a new phase of national liberation rhetoric, social justice, and openness. Yet the republic’s first five years saw sharp divisions within the Christian community, security turbulence, and indirect targeting of some figures — weakening their political representation and shrinking their parliamentary influence.
Under the Baath (1968 – 2003), Christian representation came under intense security control. The regime subjected all communities to tight monitoring and allowed no independent Christian voice in parliament or government, preferring to showcase selected Christian figures as a ‘civilised face’ of the regime.
In April 2003, the regime fell — along with the central state structure — and a new political order arose on openly sectarian and ethnic grounds. In July the same year, the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council was formed, including only one Christian, Yonadam Kanna — a representation that seemed more like political tokenism than fair recognition of a historic community.
With the 2005 Constitution, many believed Iraq was moving towards a civic, citizenship-based state. Article 14 states that “Iraqis are equal before the law without discrimination due to gender, ethnicity, nationality, origin, colour, religion, sect, belief or opinion, or economic or social status”. Article 20 affirms that “citizens, men and women, shall have the right to participate in public affairs and enjoy political rights including voting, elections, and candidacy”.
Yet Article 49(1) reads: “The Council of Representatives shall consist of a number of members at a ratio of one seat per one hundred thousand Iraqi persons, representing the entire Iraqi people. They shall be elected by direct, secret, general ballot, with the representation of all components of the people ensured”. Its ambiguity has opened the door to entrenching religious and ethnic quotas, turning minorities into ‘political shares’ parceled out among blocs.
Subsequent election laws — especially Law No. 4 of 2023 (the third amendment to Law No. 12 of 2018 on elections for the Council of Representatives and provincial councils) — set the Christian quota at five seats, distributed across Baghdad, Nineveh, Kirkuk, Erbil, and Dohuk, overlooking their presence in other governorates.
A bargaining chip
The Christian quota has not been spared the post 2003 political polarisation. At one point it turned into an open contest among the Church, certain political figures, and dominant parties whose agendas extend beyond the community itself.
In a sharp public statement, Cardinal Louis Raphaël Sako, Patriarch of the Chaldean Church in Iraq and worldwide, accused Rayan al-Kildani, leader of the Babylon Movement, of “seizing the Christian quota seats” and “taking over the Ministry of Migration and Displacement as if it were reserved for the Christian community.”
Sako went further, claiming that al-Kildani had tried to control the Christian Endowment and Christian properties in Baghdad, Nineveh, and the Nineveh Plain, and that he had “bought off Christian clergy with the help of a woman he appointed as minister” — a reference to the Minister of Migration and Displacement, Evan Faeq Yakoub.
Rayan al-Kildani responded quickly. In an official statement, he said:
“With deep regret and astonishment, we read Open Letter No. 160, dated 15 July 2023, which Patriarch Sako addressed to the President, the Prime Minister, and the Christian and Iraqi people, announcing his departure from the patriarchal residence in Baghdad to a monastery in the Kurdistan Region, fleeing the Iraqi judiciary in cases brought against him.”
He added: “We are a political movement, not brigades. We participate in the political process as part of the State Administration Coalition. The decision to withdraw the decree from him was issued by the Presidency, not by us, to correct a constitutional error.”
On 7 July 2023, the Iraqi Presidency issued a clarifying statement, saying that the revocation of Republican Decree No. 147 of 2013 — which had appointed Cardinal Sako as Patriarch and custodian of the community’s endowments — did not affect his religious standing, since he was appointed by the Holy See, not by a state decree. The Presidency explained that the earlier decree lacked legal basis and that other heads of denominations had requested similar decrees, prompting its cancellation to correct the situation.
The crisis of the Christian quota has gone beyond suspicions of capture by powerful parties to include outright exclusion of candidates who won Christian votes.
Amid such concerns, many Christians find themselves confronting a political reality of marginalisation and exclusion, not only from office but from fair representation itself.
According to journalist and political analyst Basel Boulos: “The number of Christians in Iraq before 2003 exceeded one and a half million. In Baghdad alone there were more than five hundred thousand. Today it is no exaggeration to say we have become a small-numbered component”.
Boulos adds: “The term ‘minority’ was never fitting for us, but many Christians accepted it reluctantly because some international conventions grant minorities special protection. Sadly, even that protection never reached us. There were no guarantees of existence, no justice in representation, and no respect for the component’s particularity”.
According to him: “Under the current election law, the number of seats allocated to Christians is five, versus 324 seats for everyone else. Those occupying the five cannot deliver much for Christians. Worse, attempts by some political actors to seize those seats mean they no longer represent Christians at all, but a given political force”.
For his part, Dr Rahman Al-Jebouri, head of the Rasheed Academy for Political and Governmental Development, explains: “Voters who are Christians should be allowed to vote for their Christian candidates within a special roll separated from the rolls of other Iraqis, so the scenario of falsifying their will is not repeated”.
Writer and political researcher Kifah Mahmoud argues that the root of the problem lies not only in legal formulas but in the prevailing political culture. “In developed countries”, he explains, “people no longer define themselves on a religious, sectarian, or ethnic basis, but as citizens. In advanced societies, religious differences have dissolved into a civil state that respects all equally”.
Iraq’s reality remains far from that model. Sub-identities continue to steer politics and are clearly reflected in how minorities are represented.
The crisis of Christian representation in the Council of Representatives, via the quota system, reveals a deep flaw in the architecture of political representation for minorities and reflects a wider problem: the overlap of party dominance with electoral processes.
Although the quota system was designed to guarantee representation for all components of Iraqi society, direct interventions by major political forces, doubts over voting mechanisms, and the instrumentalisation of minority seats have turned it into a tool of bargaining and apportionment rather than a mechanism of representation and fairness.
Iraq’s Christians — among the country’s oldest components — face a double challenge: shrinking numbers due to migration and targeting, and diminishing real representation in politics. This plays out through confining their candidacies to only five governorates and through the arrival of candidates who lack support within the Christian base itself.
As it stands, the Christian quota does not necessarily reflect the will of the community so much as the will of surrounding forces. This calls for a re-evaluation of the representational system to ensure that a mechanism intended for redress does not become a new pathway to marginalisation — within a political landscape still governed by sectarianism and intersecting loyalties.
