“We apologize to the Gorran Movement voters and we bear responsibility for the mistakes and shortcomings … for losing the trust of people,” read a statement from the Change Movement governing body on Monday.
“We say openly that we need change and to fundamentally review the Movement and its policies because our electorate made a conscious decision and the majority boycotted the process, the same way the general public has done so,” it added.
The overall turnout on Sunday election was 41%. In Sulaimani, 37% of voters cast a ballot, the lowest after Baghdad.
The Change Movement was in a coalition with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) for this election, partnering up with the party it split from in 2009. The Movement is officially run by a governing body of several men, with the two sons of founder Nawshirwan Mustafa reportedly holding the real power.
Election results are expected to be released Monday, but preliminary figures showed the Change Movement failed to win any seats, a resounding defeat for a pro-reform party that shook the foundation of the ruling parties during the 2009 Kurdistan election by winning 25 seats in the 111 regional assembly in Erbil. The PUK and the KDP together received only 59 seats in that vote. In the last Iraqi parliamentary election held in 2018, the movement won five seats.
“Gorran was born in 2009 from within the PUK but died in the PUK arms in 2021,” Sardar Abdulrahman wrote on Facebook.
The statement from the governing body is the first comment from the party since the unofficial results came out on late Sunday night. Many Gorran supporters blamed the current leadership for the defeat and have called on them to resign. Over the last three years, dozens of senior and mid-level officials have quit what they described as the misguided policies of the leadership.
“There were many calls that you were doing wrong politics but you did not listen,” Karwan Qaradaxi wrote in response to the governing body’s statement on Facebook. ”Now there is no point in apologizing.”
“The former electorate of Change Movement are the most politically alert in this society, because for the first time they managed to punish a [political] force for its failure to deliver on its promises,” Harem Ali wrote.
