What would they call a failure?
Despite widespread reports of voter intimidation and tussling among the supporters of rival candidates, election officials hailed the poll as an overall success, though early assessments suggested that turnout was disappointingly low.
Results of the voting, in which a raft of former militia commanders contested for seats in Parliament and provincial councils, will be announced next month.
“We did see some procedural irregularities but nothing that I consider systemic and which would have influenced the overall conduct of the election,” said Peter Erben, the chief international election officer with the United Nations-assisted Joint Elections Management Board.
Afghanistan: Campaigning Against Fear
Attacks, Intimidation as Parliamentary and Provincial Polls Launch
Human Rights Watch, September 15, 2005
Human Rights Watch’s new report, Afghanistan on the Eve of Parliamentary and Provincial Elections, documents an underlying climate of fear among many voters and candidates, especially in remote, rural areas—an atmosphere that has negatively impacted the political environment in the lead-up to the elections. And many Afghans are deeply concerned that alleged war criminals and human rights abusers are candidates and that others retain significant power behind the scenes as party or faction leaders.
“The Afghan people are clearly eager to participate in elections that will help them move away from the rule of the gun,” said Sam Zarifi, deputy director of the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch. “But they are disappointed that the government and its international partners haven’t done more to prevent warlords and rights abusers from dominating Afghanistan’s political space.”
What purpose does this serve, expediency?
Human Rights Watch also expressed concern about a provision in Afghanistan’s electoral law that allows losing candidates to take the seats of winning candidates who die or resign from office—the so-called “assassination clause.”
“The so-called assassination clause should be repealed on an urgent basis,” said Zarifi. “The last thing Afghanistan needs is the election’s losers murdering the winners to take their seats.”
“People do not live in a secure environment, and children are being kidnapped,” Abdul Samat says. “Show me security, show me where it is. There is no security. As I sit here I don’t feel secure.”
Giving Democracy a Bad Name
Afghanistan’s Parliamentary Elections
By Sonali Kolhatkar and Jim Ingalls | September 16, 2005
U.S.-backed president Hamid Karzai has defended the right of warlords to run for parliament, in the interests of “national reconciliation.” This is just the latest in a series of concessions that Karzai has made to warlords. Last October, he ran for president on an ostensibly anti-warlord platform, saying, “Private militias are the country’s greatest danger.” To back up his rhetoric, Karzai sacked two warlords in his cabinet and pretended to fire Ismail Khan by removing him from the post of governor of Herat. After he won the elections, Karzai appointed Khan Minister of Energy, and brought in the feared warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, former Defense Minister and presidential candidate, as Afghanistan’s Army Chief of Staff. U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad (now ambassador to Iraq) endorsed Karzai’s decision, commenting in March that the “decision to give a role to … regional strongmen is a wise policy.” In addition, Karzai’s government has promised former Taliban fighters immunity from prosecution for war crimes. Under this program, initiated with the approval of the United States, even Mullah Omar, the notorious Taliban chief, would be granted immunity if he recants his ways.[2]
One can only imagine what the U.S. would do if say, Hugo Chavez, were to run such democratic elections.