Dispute over Sulaimani governorship seen as test of PUK-Gorran alliance

By Nawzad Mahmoud and Hevidar Ahmed

SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region—Despite an earlier agreement between the Change Movement (Gorran) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) on the post of Sulaimani governor, the two parties are now in a deadlock and cannot agree on who should govern the province. The dispute is seen as a test to an alliance the two signed in May.

Haval Abubakir, from Gorran won the post of governor in the 2013 elections by 241 thousand votes but was denied the seat by the more powerful Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and was instead made head of the provincial council.

Now Abubakir wants his post back which he believes is his rightful place. He even told Rudaw last week that he would start his duties as governor Sunday morning. The time passed and Abubakir’s Gorran movement and the PUK haven’t agreed on the issue.

The current governor of Sulaimani is Aso Faraidoon of the PUK.

Abubakir has threatened: “I will accept no post other than that of the governor,”

The PUK and Gorran have held three meetings in less than a week but with no deal, they have now agreed to meet again on August 25.

“We waited for the current governor to step down and we waited long but it never came,” Anwar Tahir, a Gorran member of the provincial council told Rudaw.

The PUK says that they are willing to hand over the post to Abubakir and that the current governor has written and signed his resignation, but that they differ on the way it should be done.

Salma Fatih, a PUK member of the provincial council told Rudaw that her group wants at least two thirds of the members of the council to ask the current governor to step down while Gorran wants the vote of 50+1 members to be enough to decide the matter.

When the PUK and Gorran agreed on the post after weeks of negotiations three years ago they did not set a mechanism by which the governor could be voted out towards the end of his term.

Now with equal numbers of council members the two parties are at a dead end. It is believed that some PUK council members are not willing to withdraw confidence from their own governor.

Unconfirmed reports suggest that the PUK has asked the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) for help by having its members of the provincial council vote for the current governor to keep his post.

“The PUK just does not want to give up the post and keeps making excuses, otherwise Gorran and PUK have an earlier agreement between them on this,” a Gorran official told Rudaw.

Gorran and PUK signed an alliance on May 17 that brought both parties closer on national and regional politics and even had many speculate that the two might merge into one party as they were before 2009.

The new dispute over the governorship however, is seen by many as the first test of this alliance.

Rudaw has learned from well-placed sources who did not want to be named that Gorran leader Nawshirwan Mustafa has told his PUK partners that denying his group the post of governor “is like detonating a bomb underneath the May 17 treaty,”

Mustafa was said to have said this to the PUK the day he learned that the PUK members of the provincial council had boycotted a meeting during which a vote on the governor’s post was expected.