Saturday, March 5th 2011Sadr calls on supporters to clean up Iraqi streets
Karbala, A Liberal Bloc leader and Sadrist deputy said on Saturday that the leader of the Sadrist Current, Moqtada al-Sadr, has called on his supporters to clean up the Iraqi provinces as a proactive way of demanding better services.
The Karbala province MP Jawad al-Hasnawi told AKnews that more than 30,000 Sadrist supporters came out today in Karbala and across the Iraqi provinces to clean up the streets, deomonstrating the need for hard work in order to serve the Iraqi public.
Hasnawi described the campaign as "a kind of mobility against poor services and a warning to local governments that it must work harder”.
Hasnawi said that a number of Sadrist deputies joined their supporters on the streets today, in accordance with Muqtada al-Sadr’s recommendation that the parliamentary representatives must “be close to the citizens in order to know their concerns and problems and discuss the decisions that can be taken, whether legislative or executive”.
Since February 5 a wave of public rallies have swept across the Iraqi provinces with angry protestors demanding improvements to public services, especially electricity, the provision of ration-card food items, job opportunities for the unemployed and the elimination of administrative corruption in state institutions.
The protests reached a peak on Friday February 25 when nation-wide demonstrations were held in a number of Iraqi cities and hundreds of thousands of protestors took to the streets.
The Friday rallies became less peaceful in several cities, notably in Mosul where protestors set fire to the Nineveh provincial government headquarters and in Basra where the governorate was stormed. Violent clashes between security forces and the public were also reported in Baghdad, Kirkuk and Salahadin.
A total of twelve people were killed in the clashes and dozens more were reported injured, including several journalists covering the events.
http://www.aknews.com/en/aknews/4/222964/
