The main problem the fourth round of the Kurdish parliament had to always deal with was that other than the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) which has 38 seats as well as influence over the other 11 quota seats, other parties did not have any control over their MPs let alone their blocs. The KDP was the only party in parliament that had full party discipline and its MPs fully implementing their party agenda.
The other parties sent such people into parliament as their MPs who had no experience nor the ability to correctly read today’s political reality. They refused too to listen to the experienced and older politicians in their own party, thinking that the more they act against the system the more respect they’ll get from people.
Also, since 1992, the parliament remained under the will of the KDP and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) who consider themselves the founders of parliament. And so when the KDP sensed that it and the PUK were both losing their grip on parliament they shut it down and took the decision-making process back to the leadership councils of their parties.
Real parliamentary work is what the KDP is doing. Its MPs all made it to that place thanks to the support and endorsement of their party otherwise, independently, only one or two of them may have had the chance of ever being elected member of parliament.
This is true of the MPs other parties. They wouldn’t have made it to parliament with their parties’ backing.
So the speaker of parliament and his MPs who are now going from door to door begging for the reopening of parliament must know that they were the cause of its shut down in the first place and if they true are eager to reactivate it along with other government institutions, they alone can do that.
If the KDP is blamed for shutting down the parliament then it shows the total bankruptcy of the other parties and their influence over their MPs. They shouldn’t try to sell their efforts as their concern for people because in two years ordinary citizens haven’t felt anything different since the parliament was shut down.
The reopening of parliament starts from inside those parties and they can do that by brining into line their MPs and make sure they act based on their party agenda and discipline.
Rebwar Karim Wali is a Rudaw Kurdish columnist.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
