Substantial numbers and unknowns feature in the Afghan elections (overview)
Kabul (AsiaNews) On Sunday 18 September, Afghanistan will vote for a new national Assembly for the first time since 1969. On the same day, the country's 34 regional councils will be chosen. The parliamentary elections should have been held at the same time as the presidential ballot won last year by Hamid Karzai, the current head of state but in March the president had announced a delay citing "technical reasons".
Candidates vying for a seat in the lower house (Wolesi Jirga) amount to 2,800 while 3,000 have set their sights on the regional councils. Women alloted a quarter of the seats in parliament number 355. Candidates would have been more numerous still but seven were killed and 32 disqualified because of their links with armed militia groups. The electorate adds up to 11.7 million people, and 160,000 people have been recruited as polling staff for the running of the elections. Meanwhile, 6,300 people will be taken up in counting centres.
Although the country has 76 political parties registered, none of the contenders belong to them: they are all running as independent candidates. The list of candidates includes a wide range, from youth and Afghanistan's new faces to war lords and opium producers, to mujahedin and even nine former Taleban leaders. Many say the reason for their participation is to attain parliamentary immunity. Even the former Taleban minister for "the repression of vice and promotion of virtue" is running in the election; Mawlawi Kalamuddin is held to be a "moderate" by the commission charged with selecting candidates.
Among the youth contenders is the second cousin of President Karzai, 30-year-old Jamil Karzai of the National Youth Solidarity Party. He said his nationwide trips during the electoral campaign revealed that "people want new faces". Among the priorities on his agenda are improved education especially in schools and universities and the creation of job opportunities.
Listening to youth hold forth, their demands appear to be the same as those of adults: eradicating corruption, guaranteeing security and peaceful reconstruction of the country. Hedayat, a 19-year-old student, said: "The new generation wanted to be on a par with their peers in other countries. In Afghanistan, we have engineers, but they do not know how to use computers; we want to be like other nations".
Security is a top demand: in recent months the Taleban have shown their teeth again with a series of attacks and kidnappings. According to experts, "this form of opposition is carried out most of all in the south and east of the country, where the Taleban are still very strong". Renewed clashes are said to be part of the "usual" spring resurgency. Official sources say that violence has claimed more than a thousand lives in the past six months.
However the Taleban have banned any attacks during the vote because "it is not their intent to kill civilians". Even local war lords who are participating in the election either directly or through giving economic backing to other candidates, are more interested in legitimizing their power in the ballot rather than sabotaging it through violence.
Analysts say that one of the most significant problems is the necessity of guaranteeing fitting representation of women and minorities like the Sikh, nomads and Hindus. For the last, the electoral law only provides for one parliamentary seat for each group.
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14/10/2004
