Kurds have even suggested that if Abadi is so keen to form a Cabinet of nonpartisan technocrats, he should also step down because he is a senior leader of the Islamic Dawa Party and as such does not fit the criteria he has set for his own Cabinet.
The current show of Kurdish unity in Baghdad comes amid deep fissures among those parties over a number of thorny issues in Iraqi Kurdistan.
At the heart of the disputes is the fate of the office of Iraqi Kurdistan's presidency. Gorran and Komal have opposed the extension of Massoud Barzani’s tenure for another two years by a government body known as the Justice Ministry's Consultative Council.
The political strife led to Barzani's KDP taking the unusual step of blocking Gorran's speaker of the Kurdish parliament from entering the Kurdish capital, Erbil, on Oct. 12, 2015, and expelling four Gorran ministers from the Kurdish Cabinet.
Ever since, the parliament has been in a state of limbo. Gorran is now back in its opposition role inside Iraqi Kurdistan and demands an overhaul of the establishment there. Before its expulsion from the government, Gorran was the second-largest bloc in the Kurdish coalition government in Erbil with four ministerial portfolios out of 21.
But despite the bad blood in Iraqi Kurdistan, both Gorran and Komal have stood together with the KDP and other Kurdish groups in Baghdad in opposing Abadi's efforts to reform the Iraqi government. The Kurdish parties, in fact, appear to have developed an ability to compartmentalize their differences.
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