The party is grappling with a deepening dispute after several of its MPs in both the Erbil and Baghdad parliaments accused the leadership of running the party like a private business and of betraying its founding ideals.
“After differentiating and determining the loyal people of New Generation … from spies and sellouts, then, through the by-laws of the movement, sellouts will have their punishment and be fired,” read a statement from the Supreme Council.
Two New Generation MPs in Baghdad and four in Erbil recently accused the party’s leader Shaswar Abdulwahid of turning the movement into a family business, undermining collective decision-making.
One MP in the Kurdistan parliament even accused the leadership of blackmailing them with secretly captured nude images.
The party formed a disciplinary committee to challenge the dissenting MPs, but the two Baghdad MPs, Sarkawt Shams and Raboun Marouf, failed to attend their hearing. They have both been suspended.
The leadership says the allegations are a plot to destabilize New Generation, orchestrated by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the Kurdistan Region’s two big establishment parties.
“We reiterate it again, that we are fully conscious of this intelligence conspiracy against the [New] Generation and all those who have become accomplices of authority and the plot, trying to eradicate the resistance spirit of New Generation through plans,” the Supreme Council added.
A meeting of the Supreme Council was interrupted on Sunday, however, when security forces raided New Generation’s office in Sulaimani.
A “masked force” attacked the main office without a court order or notification while the Supreme Council was meeting, arresting a number of volunteers, the movement claimed.
Speaking to NRT, a news channel founded by New Generation leader Abdulwahid, party activist Himdad Shahen said several volunteers were arrested in the raid, which took place around 2:30pm on Sunday.
Security forces arrested Abdulwahid’s secretary shortly after the blackmail allegations emerged last month.
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