| Submit your comments on this article |
| Afghanistan |
| Afghan parliament begins naming absent MPs |
| 2008-05-26 |
| Afghanistan’s parliament has started naming stay-away lawmakers, with a brother of President Hamid Karzai first on the list, in a bid to stop no-shows hobbling its work, an official said Sunday. The lower house also voted Saturday to cut the salaries of MPs for each day they do not attend a session, the Speaker’s secretary Mohammad Saleh Saljoqi told AFP. “We have decided to expose the names of our absent MPs,” the legislator said. “It’s a moral punishment,” he added.“At the end of each week we will release the names of those MPs absent during the week and at the end of the month the names of those absent during the month,” he said. The first names to be given to the media were Qayoum Karzai, an elder brother of the president from Kandahar province, Fridoun Mohmand from Nangarhar and Abdul Wahab from Jawzjan. These legislators had not attended a single session in the current term, Saljoqi said. At every session 80 to 100 MPs were absent, about 60-70 for no reason, he said. The lower house, with 249 seats, was elected in the first full democratic parliamentary poll in 2005. Seven MPs have been killed and one, Malalai Joya, thrown out for allegedly insulting the assembly on television. Low attendance has held up the work of the parliament for several months, one MP told AFP. Recent pay rises for teachers took 35 days to approve while the passage of a media bill, which needs two-thirds of the House to be present, has been delayed for several months. |
| Posted by:Fred |