Vote gives Kurd leaders a scare

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq — The entrenched leadership of the Kurdistan region of Iraq was shaken Sunday by what appeared to be a stronger than expected showing in regional elections by a new opposition coalition.

Based on unofficial results, officials with one of the two governing parties conceded that they faced a very serious challenge from the upstart Gorran coalition in Sulaimaniya, one of the biggest cities in Kurdistan.

If the party tallies are confirmed, Gorran — which means "change" in Kurdish — will have mounted the first meaningful challenge to the authority of the two parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, or KDP, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, since the semiautonomous regional government was established in 1991.

After a local television station reported a preliminary count, dozens of Gorran supporters trickled into the streets here to celebrate.

Final results are expected this week, but the parties compiled their own by adding the results posted at each polling station after the election on Saturday. Officials with Gorran said their preliminary results showed that they received about 51 percent of the vote in Sulaimaniya in the race for seats in the regional parliament.

Even so, there was little doubt that the two-party governing coalition would maintain its hold on power. Officials with the coalition said they had won at least 62 percent of the vote regionwide, more than enough for the parliamentary majority needed to form a new government. They said they also remained firmly in control of the powerful regional presidency, held by Massoud Barzani.

But even a close race in Sulaimaniya would be a blow for the governing coalition, and many here are already predicting a messy and tense era for Kurdish politics.

"It is historic because there was opposition and the authorities were in a defensive position," said Aram Sheik-Mohammed, a Kurdish civil-society activist.

Gorran, led by Nawshirwan Mustafa, 65, a former PUK insider, ran on a platform of shaking up the two-party monopoly that many Kurds consider autocratic and corrupt. Popular support for Gorran would indicate a strong current of disenchantment with the government, despite the fact that many Kurds give it credit for the region's prosperity and security.

Internal dissension in Kurdish politics also could weaken the region in its battles with Baghdad over the fate of disputed territories and the sharing of budget revenues and oil and gas resources.

Jalal Talabani, the PUK chairman who also holds the post of Iraqi president, was alarmed Sunday by the preliminary counts in Sulaimaniya, his home city, and summoned the party's leadership to his mountaintop residence overlooking the city.

"He is concerned," said his son, Qubad Talabani, the region's Washington envoy, now in Kurdistan. "He wants to know what happened."

One local analyst described the Gorran coalition as a hodgepodge of disgruntled former PUK leaders like Mustafa, ultranationalist military commanders and a smattering of leftists, intellectuals and independents.

Many Kurds consider the governing parties — which control the government, the security forces and the economy — rife with corruption, nepotism and cronyism. These sentiments appeared to cut across class lines.