The decision was made in a meeting between the PUK and Gorran in Sulaimani, PUK media reported on Thursday. Gorran said they have given their support to Qubad Talabani and the coalition, in a statement released after the meeting.
Gorran and the PUK announced in early May that they would enter Iraq’s October parliamentary election as the Kurdistan Coalition. Gorran was founded in 2009 by a breakaway group of PUK members disgruntled with the parent party’s politics and for many supporters of both parties the coalition announcement was a long-awaited reunion. The status of the alliance, however, was called into doubt this month because of internal problems in the PUK.
Lahur Talabany, co-president of the PUK, was a key negotiator bringing his party and Gorran together and he was chosen to lead the coalition. After a power struggle with his co-chair, however, he announced that he had stepped down from both of his positions as co-chair of PUK and head of the coalition. He said he was entrusting his co-chair cousin Bafel Talabani and the party’s leadership council with the task of electing someone new to lead the alliance with Gorran.
With the change in leadership, the PUK also began a push for internal reform. “PUK stands by its decision and promises. This time we will work for reform and change, and we will face off irregularities with an iron fist,” Qubad Talabani said in a Facebook post on Gorran’s 12th anniversary.
In mid-July, a Gorran election told Rudaw that the electoral alliance still exists despite what was happening within the PUK.
Iraq will hold elections on October 10, ahead of schedule. Early elections were one of the demands of protesters who took to the streets in October 2019 across central and southern Iraq.
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