Upstart Iraqi bloc seeks 'peaceful uprising' in Kurdistan

Kurds vote timidly for change in Iraq president's bastion
Sulaimaniyah, Iraq (AFP) March 7, 2010 - Asked who he was voting for, Ibrahim Abdullah Hassan looked left and right to check if anyone was listening, leaned forward and whispered: Goran -- Iraqi Kurdistan's upstart opposition. The city of Sulaimaniyah where Hassan cast his ballot in Iraq's general election on Sunday has long been a bastion of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the former rebel faction of Iraq's current President Jalal Talabani. But the Goran party, whose name means "change" in Kurdish, is challenging its long grip on power with a list of candidates made up largely of PUK defectors. The 42-year-old mechanic's reticence about revealing who he voted for was fuelled by a series of clashes between Goran supporters and those of the PUK in the run-up to polling day. Only on Friday, five people were wounded in a gunfight between supporters of the two parties.

"They (the PUK) have done nothing for me," said Hassan, who has struggled to find work in his chosen field since he graduated in 1991. "Our money has been misused by the main parties," he said quietly, as he queued outside the classroom-turned-polling station in the east of the city to vote. "Most of my friends want to vote for Goran also -- 98 percent of them want more transparency and openness here." Goran is hoping to take the majority of Sulaimaniyah province's 17 seats in the Iraqi parliament and push the PUK into an embarrassing third place among Kurdish parties. The other main former rebel faction -- the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of regional president Massud Barzani, which has its strongholds in Arbil and Dohuk provinces further north -- is widely expected to win the most seats of any Kurdish party.

There have been no credible opinion polls in the region, however, so it remains impossible to predict how each party will fare. Dana Abdul Qader, a 27-year-old metal worker, explicitly said he would fear reprisals if he was to admit to local journalists that he voted for Goran. "If the journalist told the authorities, maybe they would cut my father's pension," he said, standing outside a polling station in the low-income Kalawa district of Sulaimaniyah. "The PUK don't do anything for us, only for themselves." PUK supporters were highly visible and had no qualms about declaring their allegiance to a party which fought successive Baghdad governments for more than four decades and played a key role in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime.

"My grandfather and all my family took part in the revolution (in 1975) so I voted for the Kurdistania list and a PUK candidate," said Ali Ibrahim Rasheed, 69, referring to an uprising against the central government. "They (the PUK) have made improvements in Sulaimaniyah and I'm hoping for more in the next four years." Shadan Omer Mohammed, a 36-year-old housewife, voted for the PUK as she had seen a great deal of reconstruction in her neighbourhood of the city. "There has been lots of change -- they have been successful and defended Kurdish rights," she said, dressed in bright green traditional Kurdish clothes, a common sight on polling day in the region. Goran confounded expectations by winning 23.57 percent of the vote in local elections to the autonomous Kurdish region's parliament in July standing on an anti-corruption platform. Sunday was the first time it had contested a national election. The party's breakthrough last year means that for the first time Kurdish voters have a realistic alternative to the long dominant alliance of the PUK and KDP, which were again standing on a joint ticket in Sunday's election.

by Staff Writers
Sulaimaniyah, Iraq (AFP) March 6, 2010
In March 1991, Kurdish rebels rose up against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in what is known in the region simply as "the uprising". Almost 19 years later to the day, a new political force in the region is hoping for a "peaceful uprising" of its own.

After a surprisingly strong showing in Kurdish elections in July, Goran -- "Change" in Kurdish -- is aiming to break the stranglehold on power held by the region's two political dynasties, by winning the majority of seats in Sulaimaniyah in Sunday's parliamentary election.

Goran talks of a peaceful challenge but the stakes are high and there have been armed clashes between its activists and militias loyal to political opponents in recent weeks.

"It is a peaceful uprising," Mohammed Tawfeeq Rahim, deputy to Goran leader Nusherwan Mustafa, said with a chuckle in the party's headquarters in Sulaimaniyah, 270 kilometres (170 miles) north of Baghdad.

In a more serious tone, however, Rahim, a graduate of engineering from Britain's Bath University, made his pitch for change.

"In Kurdistan, we need a new political system," he said.

"We are talking about the separation of powers, about checks and balances, about the independence of the judiciary, about the parliament to be genuine, for political parties to not interfere in the daily affairs of government."

Rahim, who is not running for parliament, predicts Goran will win 17 to 20 seats across Sulaimaniyah, the Kurdish province of Arbil, and in Kirkuk, the latter of which is at the centre of a land dispute between the autonomous Kurdish region and the central government in Baghdad.

Goran confounded expectations by gaining 23.57 percent of the vote in Kurdistan's July elections after running on an anti-corruption platform. Sunday's poll will be its first national contest.

The party is formed largely of defectors from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, one of two dominant political parties in the region; the other is the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Kurdish president Massud Barzani.

Both main parties, who began a largely successful rebellion against Saddam on March 5, 1991 after the end of that year's Gulf war, have their own peshmerga (former rebel) militias.

Goran's success has, for the first time, given the region's voters a credible alternative to the KDP-PUK hegemony, accentuated by the two parties' running for parliament on a joint slate.

That choice has turned Sulaimaniyah -- the second city in the Kurdish region and centre of power for both Goran and the PUK -- and its 17 parliamentary seats, fifth-highest of Iraq's 18 provinces, into a fierce battleground.

Five people were wounded in a gunfight between PUK and Goran supporters on Friday, the last full day of campaigning before Sunday's election.

The PUK insists it is unfazed by Goran's campaign.

"Goran are losing their popularity," said Emad Ahmed, a former regional deputy prime minister and now senior PUK official, in an interview in the party's main Sulaimaniyah office.

"Many of their followers have returned to the PUK. They are not a threat to us. ... Throughout history, there have been many movements like Goran, that rise rapidly before fading away."

Ahmed, 55, declined to predict how many seats he expected Goran to take but insisted it would not win the majority in Sulaimaniyah.

PUK officials have underestimated Goran before, however -- the PUK's political office predicted it would win seven seats in the July polls, a party official said, on condition of anonymity; it won 25.

Ahmed criticised Goran for, as he described it, the lack of a unified programme, and said it was happy staying in opposition so it could capitalise on voter anger.

But 47-year-old Sarko Osman, the number 30 candidate for Goran in Sulaimaniyah, disputed that notion.

"That election (in July) was for changing daily life for the people -- people were asking for services, electricity, better wages, houses, less corruption," said Osman, a PUK member for 29 years before switching sides last year.

"Now, we have to go to Baghdad with a national purpose for Kurds."

Asos Hardi, a Kurdish journalist who founded two of the region's three main independent newspapers, shook his head when asked if Goran support was falling in Sulaimaniyah, as the PUK's Ahmed argued.

"No, that's not right," said the 47-year-old. "The opposite is true -- if you compare it to the election in July, their popularity has grown.

"I'm sure ... if the election will go cleanly, I think the PUK will be the third party."

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