The New Generation’s Disintegration
NB: all sources are in Kurdish.
The New Generation is political party formed in Kurdistan Region of Iraq in 2017. Their internal turmoil made a hubbub in the media recently. This is a summary of what happened between 18 and 28 April, 2019:
• In a TV interview on April 18, 2019, the head of the New Generation faction, Rabun Ma’roof, in the Iraqi parliament said that “before, the political parties were creating companies; they were using those companies for embezzlement […] but nowadays, it’s the other way around, companies create political parties: they create large media outlets, and create a party: they send people [MPs] to the parliament […] and use those parliamentarians to extort and pressure the government in order to gain contracts in unlawful ways, and make billions of dollars. And they also use their media companies to extort and pressure the ministers to gain contracts in unlawful ways.” Source
• Two days later he wrote a similar statement (which got the attention of the media) on his personal Facebook page, adding a slogan at the end: “No to [political] parties; no to family rule!”
The statement was surprising to most people, because his own party started as a conglomerate, which includes a giant media company, NALIA; of which the NRT TV channels are part of.
• A day later, on April 21, the New Generation faction in Iraqi parliament, which consists of 4 MPs (including Rabun Ma’roof and Sarkawt Shamsadeen who are the two most prominent founding members of the party), issued a written statement saying that the New Generation has deviated from its founding principles and that it has “been steered to become a narrow political gang, of which all the important decision-making arms and organs have been marginalized, and stripped of consensus.” And that “the movement is merged with family and business to an extent, that unlinking them is not easy any more.” Alluding to the nepotism and the business of the party leader Shaswar abdul-Wahid: allegedly using the party to the benefit of his conglomerate, and unilaterally appointing his sister (a Gorran veteran MP who joined New Generation recently) as head of communications of the party’s faction in Iraqi Parliament.
The statement was posted by Rabun Ma’roof and others on their Facebook pages. Source
Shaswar’s supporters (through social media and anonymous pages with following numbers as large as 665K: 1; 2; 3; 4 )within the party immediately went on the offensive, and as usual, started a character assassination smear camping, and accused the MP’s of stealing government salaries meant for their bodyguards. The MPs deny that categorically and Sarkawt Shamsadeen produced decuments of two months proving he transferred the money. The party policy, strangely, is to handover those salaries, along with a portion of the MPs’ own salaries to the party pot.
It is not the first time that disillusion members of the party are being smeared; in January last year, Shaswar immediately accused some prominent members of the party, including the head of its Arbil branch, of being KDP spies when they complained about Shaswar’s monopolization of power within the party:
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They also accused a well-known journalist, Kamal Chomani, of the same thing when he wrote an article criticizing New Generation’s populism:
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• On April 22, 4 of the 8 New Generation MPs in the Iraqi Kurdistan Parliament also issued a statement (in the name of the faction) in support of their colleagues in the Iraqi parliament. Source: Awene
Shaswar abdul-Wahid himself, without naming anyone, asserted that “PUK and KDP have started buying people within our movement.” And complained that some people whom he trusted are selling out for money and position. Source: Awene
The schism deepened in the party and and turned into two wings. Shaswar’s wing issued a counter statement in the name of the party’s so-called High Committee, signed by 7 member including Shaswar. The committee consists of 14 members, and is supposedly the decision-making organ of the party, but it had not been playing its role for months, as the dissenting MPs complain, and Shaswar himself admitted in an interview that the committee hadn’t conducted a meeting since October last year, but he brushed that off and added that they could meet.
The dissenters also said that Shaswar had brought back some members of the Committee whom he had sacked and accused of being KDP and PUK spies, merely to be used by him.
• A day later, April 23, Shaswar, again without naming anyone, in an Instagram message wrote “...sellouts, degenerates and the ungrateful are the most worthless in society.” Source: NRT
It became clear that the party had fractured and the dissenters can no longer be part of a party under Shaswar’s leadership.
• On April 24, things exacerbate as one of the party’s female Arbil MPs, Shadi Nawzad, drops a bombshell is a press conference and claims the she and some of her colleagues had received a message containing a doctored video and the text: “Expect your own porno film [soon].” She also claimed that members of the party who stayed in apartments and resort cabins owned by Shaswar abdul-Wahid were threatened that they had been secretly filmed with hidden cameras in those place. Shadi Nawzad added that she will not be silenced and will make a legal complaint against Shaswar abdul-Wahid “and his gang.” Source: KNN
• On April 25, Shaswar abdul-Wahid again, indignant and defensive, denies all the allegations against him in a lengthy 50-minutes-long interview on his own NRT. He call Shadi Nawzad a friend and herself a victim, and accuses PUK and KDP of being behind all of it. The rest of the interview could be boiled down to “I pay for everything” and “I helped made all of those people.”
On the same day:
Several outlets, including NRT, claimed that several New Generation members have been arrested, with the latter and other Shaswar-owned outlets claiming that the arrests were done without court orders.
At a press conference the New Generation’s High Committee declared the memberships of Rabun Ma’roof and Sarkawt Shamsadeen frozen and that they must face a disciplinary committee. Their statement also added that they think Shadi Nawzad is “under pressure,” echoing Shaswar’s claims, and reiterated his claim that PUK and KDP are behind “the attacks on New Generation” Source: NRT
• On April 26, A judge and spokesman for the persecution refutes the claim that people were detained without court orders, and that there were arrest orders for two persons and that one of them had been arrested (detained?) so far. The one arrested is Shaswar’s personal secretary; his phone an computer were also confiscated. Source: VOA
• On April 27, NRT reiterates the claim that several of New Generation members are detained, but fails to publish the names except for one. Source: NRT