KABUL, 5 January 2004 — Afghanistan’s Loya Jirga, or grand assembly, yesterday adopted the country’s first post-Taleban constitution, with delegates approving a presidential system for the Islamic republic.
“I invite you to stand up in a sign of your approval of the new constitution,” Loya Jirga chairman Sibghatullah Mujaddedi said, prompting the 500 delegates to stand.
The historic document, worked out during three weeks of intense negotiations after some three months of public consultations, enshrines a presidential system of government with a bicameral Parliament.
The president is to be directly elected by the Afghan people and will have two vice presidents.
The 160 articles outline the framework for an Islamic republic with “Islam as its sacred religion”. However, followers of other faiths are free to worship within the provisions of the law.
Men and women are deemed to have equal rights and duties before the law, unlike under the Taleban regime, when women were unable to work.
President Hamid Karzai, who had pushed for strong powers for the president, praised the delegates for their work. “You have laid the foundation for a free, united, rich and legitimate Afghanistan,” he said.
UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi also congratulated Afghanistan on adopting its new constitution, but he sounded a word of caution, saying: “There is no rule of law in this country yet.”
Brahimi played a key role in reconciling the opposing factions at the assembly.
US special presidential envoy and ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, said the decision was a “significant milestone on your path to democracy”, after over two decades of war.
The charter was amended to grant official status to northern minority languages where they are most commonly spoken, an issue which had brought the meeting close to collapse.
Sidiq Chakari, a Tajik delegate and spokesman for faction leader and former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who had taken part in a boycott Thursday, said the deal was a milestone on the way to peace.
“It’s a very big achievement. I do hope it will bring friendship between our ethnic groups,” he said. “Everybody wants to switch to disarmament and reconstruction.”
Some Pashtuns, the country’s largest ethnic group, had pressed until the last for the charter to reverse what they say is the domination of Dari names for public institutions such as universities and courts. But they went along in the end.
“It will help demilitarize the capital and inject new freedom into education, the media, normal life,” said Khalid Pashtun, a fervent advocate of his kinsmen’s rights.
