Rudaw, Erbil - Two months ago during the plenum of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the Iraqi president Jalal Talabani said his former friend and former senior PUK leader, was behind the civil war and responsible for the bombing of Halabja. Something which the leader of Kurdish opposition movement Gorran denies in a short interview. The rivalry continues between PUK and Change while the Iraqi elections are approaching, despite the fact they have a shared history.
But the political rivalry is becoming increasingly personal. During the plenum the Iraqi president heavily attacked the Change list leader and accused him of all the dark episodes in the history of PUK, like the civil wars and the chemical attacks in Halabja. In a short interview from his major power base in Slemani, Nawshirwan Mustafa said the allegations of Jalal Talabani weren’t based on facts or documents. The Change list leader said that it was Saddam that threatened Halabja with chemical bombing and he is thus not responsible for the Halabja bomb attack in 16 March 1988, which killed thousands of people. Until recently, the Change list leader responded on the Sbeiy.com website to the statements of the PUK-leader.
On Gorran’s tv-channel KNN, Nawshirwan Mustafa said he wondered why his friends with whom he had relations for more than 40 years, can blame all responsibilities of the former authoritarian regimes on him. Change list MP Kardo Mohammed Pirdawed says both PUK and Gorran are not responsible for the crimes of Saddam’s regime, whose leaders were punished by the Iraqi court. Pirdawed says the history of the PUK doesn’t need explanation.
Fareed Asasard, a prominent leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan Party (PUK) and director of Kurdistan's Strategic Studies Center, said that the people within the Change list and the PUK do not like the media war between the PUK-leader and the Change list head in the media of both Gorran and the PUK. “This is not good. Not only me, but also people in the PUK and Change do not want to read this.” Asasard also says the Change wants to show it’s different from the PUK, while the PUK also tries to distance itself from Gorran.
The senior Change list leader Safeen Malaqara based in Erbil said that it’s true that the people don’t like the former friends talking bad against each other and that it could damage the image of both political movements. But he said the Change list leader didn’t reply yet to the statements of the PUK-leaders Kosrat Rasul Ali and Jalal Talabani and just answered propaganda against him. “But your analysis is true, that’s it bad for all of them, but the reason people vote for Gorran is not because of Naswhirwan. The main reason is that the people are tired of the corrupted political parties. Why did the people vote for Change in Erbil? While the KDP is in power?”
Change list MP Pirdawed adds that the PUK-leaders want to damage the image of Change and want to show the Kurdish people the Change list is just a copycat of PUK and not anything new. Still he doesn’t endorse the statements of the PUK and Change list heads. “I don’t endorse these statements, but Nawshirwan’s statements are highly supported by the people. The response to it is necessary, since the mass media of both parties try to depict Gorran as a bad movement.”
The media war of the former Kurdish elections still continues. After these elections of 25 July, the PUK controlled media said Gorran members were returning back to PUK. Senior PUK leader Mustafa Bakr said that Change cannot deliver on it’s promises of reform, because they do not have the power to implement projects. “They were not able to carry out these promises, and returned to PUK.” But the senior Change list leader Mam Rostam from Kirkuk said these people only returned because they needed money and jobs and that the PUK fired people in government institutions for voting for the Change list movement.
After Change won 25 seats in the Kurdish elections, it’s planning to continue to win seats in the Iraqi elections, dividing the Kurdish bloc in to competing factions. Recently there also have been violence in the PUK-ruled province of Sulaymania, which Gorran blames on the ruling parties. The Change list was blamed for the violent demonstrations in the town Piramagrun on 24 December against the PUK-ruled local government, something which the residents of the town denied.
While the PUK says the Change list cannot be able to carry out it’s promises to the people, the Change says it created an active parliament and a voice of the unrepresented people in Kurdistan. It’s likely the competition between PUK and Gorran will continue, especially in formerly PUK-dominated regions like Kirkuk and Sulaimanyah.
© Rudaw
