ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The two feuding factions of the Change Movement (Gorran) have announced different dates for the party’s congress, with each questioning the legitimacy of the other as their internal rift deepens.
“Today, we received an official letter from the [electoral] commission to hold the party’s congress on April 10,” Rovan Sarwat, Gorran’s representative at the Sulaimani office of the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), told Rudaw in an interview on Friday.
He is a member of the Kurdsat faction of the party. Gorran is now split between two camps: one headquartered on Zargata Hill and led by the sons of the party’s late founder, Nawshirwan Mustafa, and the other based in Sulaimani’s Kurdsat neighborhood under the leadership of Dana Ahmed Majid, the acting general coordinator.
Nizar Mahmood, a member of the Gorran’s national assembly, a senior body in the party, and part of the Zargata Hill faction, dismissed the April 10 announcement as “untrue and baseless.”
“The Movement will officially hold its congress tomorrow [Saturday], and nothing has changed,” he told Rudaw.
A letter issued in late March by the political parties’ affairs department of IHEC confirmed April 5 as the date for Gorran’s congress, following a request from the Zargata-aligned general committee.
Sarwat countered that April 10 is now the “official date” and that the earlier arrangement has been annulled. He said that the congress will take place “outside Zargata Hill under the supervision of IHEC.”
The rift in the party emerged after the death of its founder and repeated poor electoral performances.
Gorran emerged on the scene and made history in 2009 by winning 25 seats in the Kurdistan Region’s 111-seat parliament, becoming the first opposition party to make significant electoral gains, campaigning on a platform of reform and transparency. The party, however, has suffered a steep decline in popularity, particularly after controversial decisions such as handing power to the sons of founder Mustafa following his death, and entering into alliances with the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)—moves many viewed as a betrayal of its reformist roots.
In Iraq’s 2021 parliamentary elections, Gorran failed to secure a single seat. In the aftermath of the loss, all members of the party’s governing body, including then-leader Omar Sayyid Ali, resigned.
Last September, Ali formally handed over leadership to Majid in a public ceremony held in a park in Sulaimani after Mustafa’s sons blocked access to the party’s Zargata Hill headquarters in protest of Majid’s appointment.
Just ten days before the Kurdistan Region’s October 2024 parliamentary elections, Majid announced Gorran’s withdrawal from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and local administrations. In that vote, Gorran secured only one seat.
