Alwaght- On verge of the popular protests across the Kurdistan region Gorran Party implied support for the citizens’ demands. After outbreak of the wave of violence amid protests, the party has disparaged the Kurdistan Democratic Party’s guards for opening fire on people after the party’s offices came under attack from the protesters. Gorran Party's main argument was that the demonstrators should not have been responded by weapons and live fire, but they should have been tolerated. At the start of violent events, none of the media bound to Gorran have condemned setting fire on the Kurdistan Democratic Party’s (KDP) offices in the two cities of Sulaymaniya and Halabja, but even, as the witnesses suggest, they sent their agents among the demonstrating crowds to fuel the protests against the KDP. But the KDP’s surprise and unexpected decisions to remove the Gorran ministers from the Kurdistan region’s cabinet as well as preventing the region’s speaker of the parliament from entering Erbil have put Gorran Party in a tight corner, and it was necessary for it to take a position on it.
Just a day after dismissal of the Gorran ministers from the KDP-dominated government, the Gorran’s office has issued a statement, asserting the Iraq’s Kurdistan Democratic Party had no right to impose its individual and unilateral positions and intentions on the citizens and violate the Kurdish region’s rules. The statement continued that the government of Kurdistan belonged to nobody and no party owned the right to monopolize the political posts and remove the Gorran ministers from the cabinet. The Gorran Party had no intention to forsake its posts in the coalition government, the statement added. Moreover, sending letters to the heads of the US, Britain, France, the UN and the EU, Goran Party has complained that the removal of its ministers from the government by KDP echoed an act of the dictatorships, running counter entirely to the democratic principles. The letter urged the addressed countries and organizations to hold back the Kurdistan Democratic Party from moving towards totalitarianism, and prevent the establishment of a dictatorial political system in Iraq’s Kurdish region.
In the last meeting of the national association of Gorran movement, chaired by Omar Said Ali and held on October 15 and 16, 2015 at the party’s main headquarter in the city of Sulaymaniya, in an even more serious reaction to the recent Kurdistan region’s incidents a statement was released in which the KDP’s measures against the parliament’s speaker as well as removal of Gorran's ministers from the government have been referred to as a military coup, and painted it as a move against the law and the elected governing organs of the Kurdish region. A couple of demands have been embedded in the statement, which included:
1. Settling the crisis of Kurdish regional employees’ delayed salaries, and attending the affairs of the families that lost their members, the Peshmerga forces, and Asayesh forces, who are responsible for the Kurdistan region’s internal security, and the teachers by clarifying all of the government’s incomes, specifically oil exports profits.
2. Supporting peaceful demonstrations and dissents across Kurdistan region and speaking up against any violence against protesters or firing at them.
3. Calling on the Kurdistan Democratic Party to concede to a solution for presidency crisis through a legal procedure and the parliament. Since August 19, 2015, Masoud Barzani, the President of Kurdistan region, has lost his legitimacy. Statement demanded to respect opinions of four political movements, which included Gorran, Democratic National Union of Kurdistan, Kurdistan Islamic Union and Islamic Kurdistan Society.
4. Calling on the public opinions to make aware of the KDP’s “coup”, as it is believed that such a measure could damage the reputation of Iraq’s Kurdistan region internationally.
The statement implied that Gorran Party has set itself in a position out of the government and has looked at the issue as an opposition party. In addition, in recent days there has been news of an expected bilateral meeting between Gorran and Kurdistan Democratic Party. Reacting to the news, Mohamed Tofiq Rahim, the head of Gorran Party’s diplomatic affairs, has said on October 24, 2015 that his party’s preconditions for any dialogue and meeting with the KDP included returning of Yousef Mohamed, the Kurdistan Region’s speaker of the parliament who was prevented from entering Erbil, where the parliament located, and re-appointing the dismissed Gorran ministers in the government. Moreover, Ali Mohamed Saleh, an outstanding member of parliament from Gorran Party said on October 25, 2015 that the parliaments’ internal rules had a clear guideline on the replacement of the speaker of parliament. Based on article 16, only if the speaker died or suffered an incurable disease or resigned from his post, an alternative speaker could be introduced. So Gorran Party viewed the KDP’s measure as illegal and against the parliament’s enacted laws.
Gorran Party’s goals
After looking through the Gorran Party’s positions concerning the standing crisis in the Kurdistan region, the most significant objectives sought by this party could be estimated as following:
1. Undermining the position and power of the Kurdistan Democratic Party as Gorran's major rival in the elections.
2. Attracting the government’s critics’ attention and drawing the citizens’ votes and presenting itself as a major party that is critical of all kinds of corruption in the Kurdistan region.
3. Terminating Masoud Barzani’s power and charismatic legitimacy through opposing two-year extension of his term.
4. Leading the political groups opposing the Barzanis and KDP.
5. Pressing the other parties to accept Gorran’s power in the Kurdish community as well as the government.
