PUK new year wishes to the opposition

The members of the reformist movement Goran, who are targeted by a campaign of harassment from the Kurdistan's ruling party Patriotic Union, must brace themselves for a hard 2010 year.

Jalal Talabani, president of Iraq and leader of the PUK, spoke the 31/12/2009 in an interview about the party's relation with Nerchirvan Mustapha, Goran founder. "Nerchirvan Mustapha is an enemy of the PUK", did he say to the journalist of Sharq Awsat, one of the most important arab-language Iraqi publications. Asked if the was any possibility for the Patriotic Union to work with Mustapha's opposition list for the coming Iraqi national elections, mam Jalal said that Nerchirvan Mustapha was against the PUK and against Kurdistan region's government. He said Mustapha didn't want any kind of coalition, and accused him to try to split the Sulaimaniya governorate from the rest of Kurdistan.

It is not the first time Goran is facing this kind of declaration. At the end of november, at a conference with the directors of the PUK newspapers and TV stations, Jalal Talabani instructed them to increase the attacks against Goran and to undermine its own press machine. Heinous articles are published in the PUK press, sometimes on an everyday basis, in which Goran is described as a nest of conspirators and traitors to the party.
But this time, to illustrate Jalal Talabani's declaration, the Goran party office of MP Siwail Osman Ahmed in Koya has been destroyed by an arson attack perpetrated by unknown men the 30/12/2009 in the evening.
The 01/01/2010, in Kurd nuce, PUK's official newspaper, Jalal Talabani gave an interview as leader of the party. He condemned the attack in Koya and promised he would order the asayish to solve the affair, so tacitly admitting the asayish are a force controlled by the PUK.

The harassment, beatings, and recently murder, against Goran can be seen as PUK's electoral campaign. The Iraqi national elections, to be held in march, will be a fight for survival for the PUK. The party must fight to keep control of its territory in Sulaimaniya governorate, where Goran emerged as a force able to defy its - until now - absolute power. But the PUK must as well face the ambitions of its partner in the Kurdistan's regional government, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, who could seize the opportunity of the PUK-Goran fight to expand its power at the expenses of its ally.
The PUK is so in danger.
The riots where the residents of Piramagrun took control of the town for the day the 23/12/2009 illustrate the exasperation of the population about the derelict infrastructures, added to the rampant corruption of the PUK and its totalitarist rule. The claims made by the PUK that Goran organised the unrest were dismissed by the demonstrators themselves.

Nonetheless, Goran's popularity can only grow from this kind of events, and the PUK leadership is perfectly aware of it. The war against the traitors will so intensify.

For it is what Jalal Talabani offered to the opposition as new year wishes: a declaration of war.