Goran members defect to the PUK

"A group of 400 cadres and members of Change List from Koya area announced on november 22, 2009 their stances to return back to the lines of the PUK"
"This came during a mass meeting held in the presence of Bahran Saed Sofi PUK leadership member, the head and administrative staff of PUK organisational centre in Koya in addition to some PUK officials who received the returned cadres" (PUKmedia, 25/11/2009)

"A group of 500 cadres and members of Change List from Sulaimani province announced on november 26 their stances to return back to the lines of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan"
"This came during a meeting held in the presence of Mr Shaho representative of Mam Jalal Talabani and some PUK officials who received the returned cadres" (PUKmedia, 26/11/2009)

These kind of press releases on the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan's online information website started to appear several weeks ago.
The Change List, it is Goran, the new opposition party which made surprising gains during the july provincial elections, especially in PUK's Sulaimaniya stronghold. Its leadership is largely coming from a PUK reformist wing, tired of the party's rampant cronyism. For Kurdistan is divided in two fiefdoms, one under control of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the other under the one of the PUK, in which those two parties are controlling everything: the administration belongs to them, as well as the exploitation of resources, the distribution of amenities or else. They so allocate posts, decide of the public projects, following the interests of the party - and those of its leaders...
It is in denouncing this situation that Goran attracted the votes of a dissatisfied population. Lifelong PUK supporters casted their votes for Goran, including public sector workers who owed their position to their party affiliation.

As a result, immediately after the elections, close to 2000 of those public sector workers lost their jobs. It didn't prevent, anyway, discontent to grow against the PUK, whose popularity continues to decline. There is a serious risk to see Goran gain even more support in the national elections originally scheduled for january 2010.
Anxious to regain its power, the PUK leadership so staged mass meeting in which Goran members renounce their new loyalty to come back to the Patriotic Union. The frequency of the PUKmedia reports of these defections increases as we come closer to the elections, as well as the number of "cadres", "members" of Goran returning to the party line. If they were only 100 at a meeting held at the beginning of november, they were 200 at Bitwen the 21/11/2009, and 250 the following day at the PUK's Social Affairs offices in Zakho.
Safin Mala Qara, Goran representative in Erbil and himself former senior member in the PUK, explained that a lot of the defectors were people who were expecting Goran to act as the PUK does, and so provide them with posts and advantages. Once they realised Goran would not reproduce the patronage system it denounces, did he explain in an interview with KNN TV, they went back to the PUK.
Amongst those people are as well some of the teachers, police officers, sacked after the july elections for having supported Goran. The PUK recontacted them and promised to give them back their former jobs, provided they would publicly abjure.
To provide always more participants, it is alleged that some of them went to several meetings, and that at one opportunity the personnel from an administrative office were instructed to attend. Is it true?
The theatralisation of those events and their authoritarian nature, reported by PUKmedia in its inimitable Soviet press-like style, led Shaho Saed, a Goran MP at the autonomous Kurdistan assembly, to say that the repentants are treated as war prisoners surrendering.

In a funny parallel, PUKmedia, during the past week reported the events beside the information "President Barzani pardons 250 prisoners"...