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| Afghanistan/South Asia | |||
| 21 Afghan Candidates Disqualified for Ties to Militias | |||
| 2005-09-13 | |||
| KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 12 -- Twenty-one candidates running in Afghanistan's upcoming legislative election have been disqualified for maintaining links to illegal armed militias and seven more for failing to resign from government posts, the joint Afghan and international Electoral Complaints Commission announced Monday. The move, six days before the Sunday vote, followed dismay among many Afghans over the commission's decision two months ago to exclude only 11 of nearly 6,000 candidates on the basis of failure to disarm. Six others were barred for retaining official positions. The voting will be Afghanistan's first parliamentary election in more than two decades. The electorate is to choose 249 representatives for the lower house of parliament as well as members of 34 provincial councils that will help select the upper house. The latest disqualifications did not satisfy human rights advocates who have expressed concern that the field of contenders is rife with warlords who committed well-documented atrocities during warfare that began in 1978. "We're definitely happy to see more names excluded, and to see some mid-ranking names this time as opposed to just district-level people," said Joanna Nathan, Afghanistan director of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based advocacy organization. "But there's still widespread disappointment that the big names are not on there."
Grant Kippen, chairman of the electoral commission, countered that the body did not have the power to disqualify a candidate on grounds of war crimes unless there had been a conviction. That is a virtual impossibility because Afghanistan has no war crimes tribunals. "We can't deal with complaints that are simply allegations," Kippen said. "Our mandate is to deal with offenses under electoral law. We're not a criminal court."
Nathan and other rights advocates have complained that the commission is dominated by the government of President Hamid Karzai and that its work is largely secret. "It's all about bargaining behind closed doors," Nathan said. Although the 21 excluded candidates came from a variety of provinces and ethnic groups, none is considered close to Karzai.
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| Posted by:Steve White |