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Political and Electoral Background
The KRG held its regional parliamentary election in September 2013. It was an election of great significance and candidates battled acrimoniously for their seats. In fact, one can argue that for the people in the Kurdistan region, the regional parliamentary election is likely the most important election for the electorate, due to the nature of Iraqi governing system. The KRG includes three governorates in Erbil, Sulaymaniyah and Duhok. This regional government is the only real sovereign political body. In view of this sovereign organization, the region has been described as "a de facto state."1 Electoral and subsequently parliamentary democracy reached the region in 1992, after the withdrawal of the central government due its flagging military, security, and administrative power. The first election in 1992 had a distinct "aura"-an aura of authentic artwork. It was not only the first manifestation of the region's political power, but also a demonstration of the Kurdish people's existence. It was an election to form a new state, a novel government. Democracy requires a defined territory and people as well as a cohesive state. However, in 1992, none of these existed. These absences resulted in roadblocks to democracy, which remain in the region today. Thus, it was not surprising that the second election did not occur until after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Elections in the region have two faces, like the Roman god Janus: one looking at the past, and the other at the future. Thus, elections might cultivate the idea of democracy through practice, while simultaneously, in a post civil war society, maintains and revives pre-modern formats of relationships, which in most cases are anti- democratic.
In the first election, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) emerged with success. Both parties proclaimed their right to govern, as they feared they would lose public support for the next election if they ruled with anything less than full power. This dynamic resulted in a fifty-fifty coalition government. This inconclusive competition for dominance damaged the region's democracy and government formation. The fifty-fifty model divided the government body and the geographical organization of the electorate, and has resulted in entrenched regional unrest. Bad governance, limited information, and personal and factional enmities contributed to the population's disenchantment with the system and the emergence of Islamic political parties. This development resulted in the first distinctions between secular and Islamist ideologies-concepts still not fully understood by the region's populations
In post-Saddam Iraq, the KRG region has leapt forward in many areas. The Ba'ath regime had been an existential threat to the Iraqi Kurds, and its demise changed the nature of the country. Not even a century old today, the Iraqi state came to being as a post-Ottoman, Western creation, but there is no commonality among its populations. As former Iraqi minister Ali Allawi put it, "Iraq as a limited geographical expression does not have the civilizational unity."2 Despite this traditional discord, the post-Saddam era set the stage for post-partisan politics in the KRG. Under these conditions emerged the Gorran (Change) Movement-the first real opposition movement in the Kurdish political sphere. In its debut election in 2009, the movement won 25 parliamentary seats: a political event that changed and redefined the nature of regional party politics. The movement divided the PUK, halted the Islamists' progress, and applied pressure to the KDP.