KOBANI - In an interview with Buyerpress, the former co-chair of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) Salih Muslim confirmed he is still a member of the PYD and said he refused to nominate himself again to lead the party for the sake of democracy.

“Maybe a new presidency will come up with something new. Of course we are still in the party, but we will have a role to play in our duties,” he said.

The PYD elected Shahoz Hesen and Ayshe Hiso, replacing Salih Muslim and Asya Abdullah as co-chairs in it’s last party congress last week.

“I have tried to be worthy of this task. Finally, it is the people who decide, we are all with all our efforts to serve the blood of our martyrs and this delicate phase we are going through,” he said.

The PYD co-chair denied that he left his position because he was tired of his work. “We are going through a revolutionary phase, there is a change and historical tasks lying on the shoulders of the party,” he said.

So far, the PYD has not assigned him a new task in the party, but he said he is still a member of the party.

"We will assist the new joint presidency to achieve success, because success is not an individual personal success, but the collective success of the party and ideas and ideology,” he said.

The former leader also criticized the Barzani-backed Kurdish National Council (KNC) for not attending the Kurdish National Congress last week in the city of Ramalan as an ‘evasion of duty and responsibility’.

The PYD also said they fully support the Kurdish independence referendum that took place on the 25th of September in Iraqi Kurdistan despite of the their differences with the Kurdistan Regional Government.

The PYD and the Barzani-backed KNC had major disagreements since the Duhok agreement in October 2014 to share power failed.

“The referendum is a natural right and we support the referendum anywhere, in any city, region, village or territory. It is the natural right of the people and they must express their opinion,” he said.

The PYD was established on 20 September 2003 in northern Syria and follows a model of confederalism. The party says it follows a third line policy of neither supporting the so called official opposition nor the Syrian regime.