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Kurdistan
Kurdistan Coalition’s election banner on the walls of Sulaimani’s Salim Street. Photo: Mohammed Othman/Rudaw
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Two Kurdish parties joined forces in the hopes of strengthening their hand and increase their votes in Iraq’s October 10 parliamentary election, but they both face internal problems that could alienate voters and undermine their success at the ballot box.
The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Change Movement (Gorran) in May announced their union under the name of the Kurdistan Coalition. They are the only Kurdish alliance in this election, but their history is one of rocky relations.
Gorran was founded in 2009 by a breakaway group of PUK members disgruntled with the parent party’s politics. They were led by the late Nawshirwan Mustafa and set out to be an opposition movement, but beat the PUK in the 2013 election for the regional parliament.
They hold a combined 23 seats in the current Iraqi parliament and hope to increase that number by running as a coalition. The Kurdistan Coalition is competing in 24 circles across eight provinces with a total of 44 candidates, only seven of whom are from Gorran and the remainder are with the PUK.
“In circles where we have Gorran candidates we work for them, and in circles where we have no candidates and PUK does, we work for their candidates,” Shunas Sherko, a Gorran candidate in Sulaimani, told Rudaw English on Thursday.
The coalition aims to restore the power balance in the Kurdistan Region, head of the coalition Qubad Talabani said in a campaign stop in Garmiyan on Wednesday. Democracy and freedom “will be threatened, if the power balance is not brought back,” he said.
A number of factors stand in front of the coalition’s path to victory, including its main rival, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).
KDP rivalry
PUK, Gorran, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) have been both friends and foes over the years. KDP and PUK fought a civil war in the mid-1990s. They later came together to form the Kurdistan Regional Government. In 2009, Gorran started off in opposition to both of the ruling parties, but in 2013 they too joined in forming the government.
The rivalry is playing out on the campaign trail. Senior member of the KDP Nechirvan Barzani, who is also president of the Kurdistan Region, at a campaign event on Sunday said the KDP is “the only political party that is taken seriously” in the Region. His comment sparked rage among PUK members.
“Any party that doesn’t address and take the PUK seriously, the PUK will not address them or take them seriously,” said PUK member and parliament speaker Rewaz Faiaq. Qubad Talabani, of the PUK, at a rally in Garmiyan accused the KDP of trying to “weaken the position of Kurdistan Coalition, PUK, and Gorran.”
The KDP and PUK have longstanding agreements to share positions of power, in both Erbil and Baghdad.
The KDP, which takes the majority of votes, holds both the regional presidency and the premiership, with the PUK taking the speaker of the parliament. In the federal government, the PUK plays a stronger role, taking the presidency as the Kurdish share, while the prime minister is a Shiite and the parliament speaker is a Sunni. The KDP gets a deputy parliamentary speaker post. In the previous election, the KDP made a bid for the Iraqi presidency, but lost to the PUK’s Barham Salih. The KDP’s candidate Fuad Hussein was named foreign minister.
This election, the Kurdistan Coalition’s position is that the Iraqi president must be a Kurd, according to Sherko. “We find it very important that the presidency remains Kurdish, and we will not compromise that for any parliamentary position,” he said.
Internal PUK feud
Qubad Talabani was not the first head of the Kurdistan Coalition. He took the leadership of the coalition from his cousin Lahur Talabany following internal issues inside the PUK. The power struggle that saw Bafel Talabani oust his co-president Lahur Talabany cast doubts on the strength of the Gorran-PUK electoral alliance.
Bafel Talabani said the shakeup was to end abuse of party positions such as smuggling and extortion. Lahur Talabany announced on July 20 that he had “temporarily” handed over power on the condition that a committee be formed to investigate “baseless allegations” made against him.
The situation appears to have calmed, but Lahur Talabany’s exile could hurt PUK’s votes.
The Kurdistan Coalition under Qubad Talabani’s leadership retracted its endorsement of candidates affiliated with Lahur Talabany, most notably Ala Talabani, who is one of the PUK’s senior members and has had a seat in all five previous parliaments.
Ala Talabani is still registered on the Kurdistan Coalition list, but her posters in Kirkuk picture her alongside Lahur Talabany.
Earlier this month, she indirectly sent a message to Qubad Talabani, saying “We are in Baghdad to solve the problems of Kirkuk and follow up on people’s demands. We have not come here to take selfies.” A day earlier, Qubad Talabani had posted a selfie video.
According to information obtained by Rudaw English, some supporters of Lahur Talabany have said they will either boycott the election or will vote for another party.
Party officials have expressed concern about the PUK’s situation.
PUK executive council chief Mala Bakhtiar said the PUK is no longer being attacked by its rivals like Gorran and the Coalition for Democracy and Justice, a short-lived breakaway party. “Now, PUK has people against it from within. At the same time as the election campaign, PUK has the widest campaign of antagonism within itself in the history of the PUK,” he said in a Facebook post on Monday.
Gorran had offered to mediate between the cousins. Gorran’s head Omar Sayid Ali on several occasions spoke to both sides and offered his help. Within the Kurdistan Coalition, however, Gorran has repeatedly said that they do not interfere in the PUK’s internal affairs.
“I am not aware of the PUK's internal affairs,” said Sherko. “However we see a lot of excitement for the Kurdistan Coalition from people.”
Gorran internal feud?
As a breakaway party from the PUK, Gorran was the first real opposition party in Kurdistan Region politics and it took second place in the regional parliamentary election in 2013, defeating the PUK in Sulaimani.
When the Kurdistan Coalition was announced this year, many Gorran supporters were upset to see an alliance with the party they had rejected. They pointed out that Gorran was formed in the first place because they disapproved of the PUK’s politics. The alliance was a killer of the hope for change that 12 years ago served as their candle in the darkness.
"You used to go on TV and call each other thieves. How come now you’ve all come together?" Facebook user Muhamad Kfri asked, reacting to news of the alliance.
Despite the concerns, Gorran said the decision to form the coalition with the PUK was a group decision.
“There was an argument over whether we should enter this agreement or not, but that does not mean there was a problem. Eventually with a more than 75 percent vote of our national council, it was decided to go forth with the agreement,” Sherko said. “I have not seen anyone from our friends at Gorran have problems with this agreement. There might have been notes and opinions, but there have not been any opposition to the agreement as a whole.”
“There has in no way been any discussion about reunion. This is an extension of the views of the late [PUK founder] Jalal Talabani and Nawshirwan Mustafa. It is a start of working together towards unifying Kurds in the future,” Sherko said. “There have been no problems within Gorran about having an agreement with the PUK.”
Other Gorran officials have agreed that the coalition is only for the election and is not a reunion of the parties.
“Both sides have agreed that we can proceed in the election together and we can be stronger together. Whether it will continue after elections or not, it is at the moment an election coalition. Neither we as Gorran nor PUK have discussed the future, apart from the election coalition,” Darbaz Mohammed who heads Gorran’s side of the election campaign said in a panel held by Rudaw Research Center earlier this month.
The PUK, however, hopes the coalition will lead to a full reunion.
“This unity makes me really happy. This coalition is not only for this election, but for the return of peace and stability to our community,” Qubad Talabani said at a rally in Penjwen earlier this month.
In a meeting with reporters in early September, Bafel Talabani also expressed optimism, saying the PUK is happy to extend its cooperation with Gorran. “We should work on a new agreement” after the election, he said.
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