PUK should free itself from KDP domination

By Mufid Abdulla:

Arguably the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) deserves the credit for re-starting the armed struggle against Saddam following the defeat of the revolt led by Mustafa Barzani’s forces in 1975.

Unfortunately the PUK leadership squandered that credit during its two decades in power. Their Strategic Agreement with Masud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) has tested the nerves and ingenuity of the PUK rank-and-file for the last several years. The members want the PUK to make progress, but the pact with the KDP is holding them back.

Instead of dithering over Jalal Talabani’s terminal illness, the PUK should now step away from the Strategic Agreement. This will allow the party to rally its grassroots, consolidate, re-orientate and re-assert its position in the south of Kurdistan nationalist movement.

The KDP’s blatant domination of the PUK has been clear to anyone who can read politics. The link with the KDP has stymied the PUK’s progress – as shown in the 2009 parliamentary elections, when the PUK was defeated in the Suli area by the breakaway Gorran movement, which won 25 seats due to dissatisfaction with the two ruling parties.

The relationship between these two parties has since become strained.  When PUK Politburo member Arsalan Baiz was appointed president of the Kurdistan Parliament, he took down the portrait of KDP founder Mustafa Barzani and replaced it with photos of the two current leaders, Masud Barzani and Jalal Talabani.

The Agreement was made by these two leaders as a marriage of convenience – to share the oil income and wealth of Kurdistan between themselves and their families and cronies. It has damaged the PUK to the extent that some observers predict the party will massively lose ground to Gorran in the 2013 elections.

Rather than picking fights with everyone, the PUK must face up to reality. Making the effort to understand and respect Gorran and the other opposition parties would be a good place to start.

However, every year the PUK leaders celebrate their Foundation Day so noisily that they forget to keep an eye on what’s happening under their noses. Both the PUK and KDP leaders seem eager to reconstruct their strategic relationship (whose historical roots lie in the aftermath of their 1990s civil war), even though it has not benefited ordinary people. Barzani’s visit this week to the PUK politburo in Suli showed that the KDP is keen to keep the PUK as its ‘partner in crime’.

Under Talabani the PUK has become a highly restrictive organization, in which just a few leaders dare to speak openly about what many see as a threat to their party. The PUK currently lacks the leadership needed for an ‘exit strategy’ in the post-Talabani era. But it needs to move fast with some robust restructuring, escape from KDP domination and act as an independent organisation.

Copyright © 2012 Kurdistantribune.com