Will Afghanistan see free and fair elections?

Will Afghanistan see free and fair elections?
September 2005

The Hindu

In the absence of institutional safeguards, rule of law, and security of life, the election process in Afghanistan may be compromised beyond acceptable limits.
ELECTIONS TO Afghanistan’s Parliament and provincial councils on September 18 will meet yet another of the Bonn process benchmarks for the country’s reconstruction. The agreement hammered out in December 2001, between Afghan factions and UN representatives, stipulated that free and fair elections for a fully representative government would be held no later than two years from the date of convening of the emergency Loya Jirga. Though that deadline passed in June 2004, elections were delayed because of the enormous difficulties in conducting them. Subsequently the presidential elections were held separately in October 2004. Now elections will be held to Parliament and the provincial assemblies. The district council polls have been further postponed.
While elections, with the promise of consulting the will of the majority, are always viewed as a step forward, in Afghanistan several issues cause concern. In the absence of institutional safeguards, rule of law, and security of life, the process may be compromised beyond acceptable limits. In the haste to adhere to a preordained timetable of ‘reconstruction’ benchmarks, the minimal needs of a voting public have, in some instances, become secondary.
International experts, who move from country to country and conflict zone to conflict zone conducting elections, have been hired for Afghanistan. Most of them have had no experience of the country and are there on short-term contracts for the single task of carrying out the electoral exercise. Trained in war zones they are adept at dealing with difficult logistics and constraints of resources, exhibiting creative energy in their organisational role. However the ‘tech-team approach’ belies the raison d’etre of the endeavour, which is to introduce democracy to a population that has scarcely tasted it.
Twelve million Afghans are eligible to vote for the Wolesi Jirga, the upper house of Parliament, and the provincial councils. For the provincial council at least, the people will be voting for an institution they know nothing about. With the powers of the provincial councils still to be finalised, the elections were announced, nominations filed, candidates scrutinised, and the campaign started. So great was the urgency to conduct the elections that it did not matter that the electorate would be voting candidates to a job about which neither they nor the candidates nor the electoral commission knew anything. Given the slow and laborious process of dissemination and absorption of information it is unlikely that they will anytime soon.