Kurdistan Election Decided

Iraq’s elections are still too early, and too close, to call, but here in Kurdistan enough is clear that one party is exultant and another distressed. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani appears to have bounced back from the brink of political extinction following the rough beating it received from a group of former party cadres in Kurdistan’s regional parliamentary elections last July. Calling in particular for an end to corruption, these former party officials coalesced into a reform movement called Goran, or “change,” which walked away with 25 percent of the vote in those polls.

For now, however, the PUK can heave a sigh of relief as early returns show that the party held its own against Goran. The PUK ran in alliance with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of regional President Masoud Barzani, while Goran ran alone. In Sulaimaniya governorate, the heartland of both the PUK and Goran (and where Goran trounced the PUK in July) the PUK appears to have won everywhere except in the city of Sulaimaniya itself. In the town of Koya, where Talabani was born, the PUK squeaked out a victory after its humiliating defeat there seven months ago. And Goran activists acknowledge that the PUK far outpaced them in the important governorate of Kirkuk.

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