Afghan politics looks feisty

[unhappycamper]

http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/2013/10/23/afghan-politics-looks-feisty/

Afghan politics looks feisty

The Afghan Election Commission released in Kabul on Tuesday the provisional list of candidates for the presidential election due on April 5 next year. As many as 16 out of 26 candidates have been disqualified on various technical grounds. But the good thing is that all ‘front runners’ remain on the arena, which promises a ‘level playing field.’

The most obvious thing is that a whole new generation of Afghan politicians — ‘midnight’s children’ who appeared after the 2001 US invasion — has surfaced alongside hardened veterans. Over half a dozen former ministers in President Hamid Karzai’s cabinet figure as candidates and at the same time there is no dearth of old war horses, either.

Yet, they are happily mixing in a fascinating melting pot. Second, Afghan democracy is developing in a progressive direction that puts India’s ‘identity politics’ to shame. True, ethnic, religious and ethnic identities have become the main consideration in making political alliances — rather than ideological affinity. In fact, ideology takes a remote back seat. However, the attempt is to bridge the ethnic and religious divides rather than fuel polarization.

Thus, former World Bank official and finance minister Ashraf Ghani (Pashtun) who was once billed as America’s favorite, has picked the colorful ‘warlord’ Rashid Dostum (Uzbek) as his vice-presidential nominee, although Dostum’s background is completely antithetical — trained in the former Soviet military academy in Frunze, having served in the communist government of Najibullah as trusted militia commander, and condemned by western human rights bodies as having perpetrated some of the most horrendous war crimes against hundreds of Taliban prisoners in 2001. Ghani’s second running mate is Sarwar Danish (Hazara), former justice minister.




unhappycamper comment: Asia Times sheds a little more light on the subject:


http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/SOU-02-241013.html

Next Afghan president: A pen or bulldozer?
By Frud Bezhan
Oct 24, '13

A bulldozer. A radio. A pencil. A Koran. These are just a few of the candidates vying to win Afghanistan's upcoming presidential election.

For each of the 10 candidates expected to be on the ballot for the April 5 vote, there is a symbol. And those symbols will be printed on ballot papers alongside the name and photograph of each candidate to help voters choose their preferred candidate.

The idea is to make voting easier for the many eligible voters in the country who cannot read. Only 39% of Afghanistan's adult population is literate.

In keeping with elections dating back to 2004, the country's Independent Election Commission (IEC) initially assigned a symbol to each potential candidate assuming that there would be a high number of contenders to choose from. (This approach caused problems during general elections in neighboring Pakistan this spring, where some candidates took umbrage at the symbols they were assigned.)