KABUL, 8 September 2005 — The head of Afghanistan’s opposition yesterday said President Hamid Karzai was a weak leader and a new Parliament, to be elected on Sept. 18, would have to improve government policy across the board. Yunus Qanuni a former interior minister and education minister in Karzai’s transitional government and runner-up to Karzai in last year’s presidential election, said he and his allies expected to win up to 50 percent of Parliament seats.
“Afghanistan faces a leadership crisis, the main crisis is the weakness of the leadership,” Qanuni told Reuters in an interview at his home in the northern outskirts of Kabul. “The government’s economic policies are unsuccessful, its policy against terrorism has collapsed, its policy against drugs has collapsed, corruption is rising daily and international aid has not been used effectively and transparently.”
“These are the priorities which parliament should debate and help the government move toward improvements.” Afghans will vote for a lower house of Parliament and provincial councils to complete the last step in an international plan to restore democratic government after 25 years of conflict with security worries mounting on a surge of Taleban violence.
Qanuni, an ethnic Tajik from the Panjshir Valley, the heart of opposition to Soviet occupation and Taleban rule, said the government had no strategy to end the insurgency. “The problem of the Taleban is not because of the Taleban’s power and strength, it is because of the weakness of the government,” he said. “If we had a powerful government and a strong leadership, the issue of Taleban and terrorism would have been solved,” he said.
Despite his criticism, he said he did not want to see hostility between the legislature and the government. “We’re hopeful that at the beginning there won’tbe hostility... Our vision of a future parliament is a moderate one. We hope to have a real national parliament, through transparent elections, which is neither an enemy of the government nor its tool,” he said.
But in a sign of possible trouble ahead, Qanuni said the new Parliament may not approve all of Karzai’s Cabinet, which will be one of its first tasks. “The current Cabinet of Afghanistan has no tangible achievements... I’m not so hopeful that all members can be approved,” he said without elaborating.
Meanwhile, Afghan women gathered in a Kabul house yesterday for some instruction on a complicated voting procedure that officials fear could cause big delays on polling day. About 60 women, most with their heads covered by shawls, met in a house on one of Kabul’s hills. An election commission instructor showed them a sample of Kabul’s very long ballot paper — seven pages with nearly 400 names.
“It’s the eleventh hour now before the election, just a few more days, and we’re really trying to get the message to people about ballot papers,” said election commission education officer Emelie Jelinek. “It’s quite a complicated election ... so they’ve really got to show people how they can vote, they’ve got to give them sample ballots, explain the whole voting procedure,” she said.
About 1,800 instructors have fanned out across the country to prepare people for election day when they will cast two ballots — one for a 249-seat lower house of Parliament and one for a council in their province.
