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Kurdistan Election Decided
10.3.2010
By Joost Hiltermann |
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March
10, 2010
Iraq’s elections are still too early, and too close,
to call, but here in Kurdistan enough is clear that
one party is exultant and another distressed. The
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Iraqi
President Jalal Talabani appears to have bounced
back from the brink of political extinction
following the rough beating it received from a group
of former party cadres in Kurdistan’s regional
parliamentary elections last July. Calling in
particular for an end to corruption, these former
party officials coalesced into a reform movement
called Gorran, or “change,” which walked away with
25 percent of the vote in those polls.
For now, however, the PUK can heave a sigh of relief
as early returns show that the party held its own
against Gorran. The PUK ran in alliance with the
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of regional
President Massoud Barzani, while Gorran ran alone.
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Joost Hiltermann, Deputy Program Director for the
Middle East and North Africa, International Crisis
Group |
In
Sulaimaniyah governorate, the heartland of both the
PUK and Gorran (and where Gorran trounced the PUK in
July) the PUK appears to have won everywhere except
in the city of Sulaimaniyah itself. In the town of
Koya, where Talabani was born, the PUK squeaked out
a victory after its humiliating defeat there seven
months ago. And Gorran activists acknowledge that
the PUK far outpaced them in the important
governorate of Kirkuk.
Observers attributed Gorran’s relatively poor
showing to a number of factors. The main one may be
that Kurdish voters like the idea of reform, and
trust Gorran deputies, who have stood up in the
regional parliament and challenged the ruling
parties with a zeal previously unknown in Kurdistan,
to produce it. But that’s inside the Kurdistan
region. In the federal parliament in Baghdad, they
prefer their representatives to present a unified
nationalist Kurdish front unspoiled by unruly Gorran
politicians seeking to distinguish themselves from
their rivals and possibly even—gasp!—making separate
deals with Arab parties on issues of Kurdish
national interest.
Gorran will therefore have to go back to the drawing
board and start building a popular movement that
reaches beyond its narrow base in the Sulaimaniyah
urban professional class. Its next challenge will be
provincial elections in the Kurdistan region at the
end of October.
As for the PUK, it dodged a bullet. Long an equal to
the KDP, the PUK has seen its influence wane over
the past couple of years owing to internal
dissension and a looming crisis over who will
eventually succeed Talabani. Ever since an
internecine conflict in the 1990s, its relationship
with the KDP has been defined by a secret strategic
agreement that provides for an equitable sharing of
power and wealth. As the PUK began to falter,www.ekurd.nethowever,
some in the KDP began to question this agreement’s
utility and had spoken of cutting their partner
loose. Such a move could have serious consequences
for the region’s stability, which is far from
assured. For now, the strategic agreement holds, but
the succession crisis remains and Gorran is waiting
for the next opportunity to strike again.
Joost R. Hiltermann is deputy program director
for the Middle East and North Africa at the
International Crisis Group.
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
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