During the conference, members voted to elect 55 new members to the party’s National Council and approved both the political program and the internal constitution of the faction. All decisions were reportedly passed by an absolute majority of the attendees.

A participant in the conference confirmed to Peregraf that they had received an official letter from the commission approving the April 5 date and had arranged for the presence of IHEC observers. “We held the conference based on the official letter from the commission and were fully prepared for their representatives to attend, but they didn’t show up,” the source said.

According to Iraqi law, IHEC representatives must be present at party conferences to monitor voting procedures, validate internal regulations, and oversee the election of party leadership.

Gorran is currently split between two rival factions: the Zargata group, led by the sons of the party’s late founder Nawshirwan Mustafa, and the Kurdsat group, headed by Dana Ahmed Majid, the acting general coordinator. While the Zargata faction moved forward with today’s conference, the Kurdsat group is set to hold its own congress on April 10, based on an official letter from IHEC’s Sulaimani office.

The political parties’ affairs department of IHEC had previously issued a letter in late March confirming April 5 as the approved date for the Zargata-led conference. The absence of the commission’s representatives at the event, however, raises questions about the legitimacy of the conference procedures and deepens the internal division within the party.

Gorran was founded by Nawshirwan Mustafa along with several former officials from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). The movement made its electoral debut in the 2009 Kurdistan parliamentary elections, winning 25 out of 100 available seats, in addition to 11 seats allocated for specific communities. This result took the two dominant parties, especially the PUK, by surprise.

Nawshirwan Mustafa's initiative tapped into widespread dissatisfaction with the PUK and the  Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), positioning Gorran as the primary opposition force in the Kurdistan Parliament and launching a campaign of dissent. For the first four years in parliament, Gorran operated as an opposition party; however, after the 2013 parliamentary elections, where it secured 24 seats, it joined the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

In October 2015, the Gorran-affiliated speaker of parliament was prevented from returning to Erbil, and Gorran ministers and officials were removed from their government positions by a decision from the PDK Political Bureau due to ongoing conflicts. Following Nawshirwan Mustafa's death, the Gorran Movement encountered numerous challenges, resulting in the departure of various leaders and factions. In 2019, during the formation of the ninth cabinet of the KRG led by Masrour Barzani, Gorran re-entered the power structure, obtaining four ministries and a vice presidency in Kurdistan Region Presidency, which negatively impacted its public image.

In the last Kurdistan parliamentary elections, the movement won only one out of 100 seats. It currently has one MP and aligns with the Kurdsat group, led by Dana Ahmed Majid, the acting general coordinator.