PUK Official: Disagreements About to Get Out of Hand
Leaders of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) have failed to hold a party convention originally planned for January 31, with some officials warning that the internal differences “are about to get out of control.”
“The PUK internal problems are about to get off their natural course,” said Mala Bakhtayr, head of the PUK leadership council on his party’s Kurdsat TV.
In a meeting on Friday, senior PUK leaders decided to postpone the convention without giving a new date. At the same time they said that the postponement would end the mandate of the current leadership.
Mala Bakhtayr said the return of Jalal Talabani, PUK secretary general, is the best tool that could reunite the party. Meanwhile, he said he was willing to resign from his own post “for the sake of keeping the unity with the PUK.”
Talabani is currently recuperating in a German hospital from a stroke he suffered more than one year ago.
Mala Bakhtyar said that despite the disagreements among the PUK leadership over how to restructure and run the party, they have done their best to “maintain unity.”
He said that the disputes among his party’s leaders aren’t new.
“There are problems inside the PUK and in its previous conventions, but Talabani himself was always there and he didn’t let the issues get out of hand,” he said.
Meanwhile, last week senior PUK leaders gathered in Sulaimani where they appointed the party’s two deputy chiefs, Barham Salih and Kosrat Rasul Ali, and Talabani’s wife Hero Ibrahim Ahmed, as acting leaders.
A day later however, Salih told the media that he wouldn’t take up the post, saying, “I am only an ordinary member of the PUK.”
Salih told Rudaw that he wouldn’t accept any post “until after the convention.”
In a joint statement today, the two deputies said that despite failing to meet the initial deadline, they insist on holding “a legitimate and fair convention to renew, revive and reform the PUK.”
Rudaw
