A Headless Parliament!

To get a true feedback of introducing a new brand, well-fashioned democracy as per the needs of the costumers of European or American streets one has to take the example of the so-called democracy that was gifted by US and her allies to Afghanistan after defeating the breeders of terrorists (as per the western language) in the lands of Afghans, a nation that had no more remained a nation but divided into pieces on the bases of ethnicities and had fought each other for at least three continuous decades.

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The democracy that everyone enchanted as the trophy of the fight of the free world against a group of fanatics, who wanted man to go back to the stone age, rushed in with glory bringing in the ones who were either cheat enough or armed enough to the luxurious parliament house known in their local terms as the house of the nation. Since the imposition of democracy in Afghanistan, Afghans have gone to the polling stations risking their lives to vote either for their president or the parliament. The results were no surprising at all. Last September they went to the polling booths again and voted or were made to vote for a parliament. The new parliament took at least four months before the President, who had also come through voting, one of the most fraudulent one though, to open the “House of the Nation”. However, it didn’t even surprise nor does it surprise anyone in Afghanistan to see their “House of the Nation” headless for the last 15 days. The house members haven’t agreed on a single member to head them through for the last half month.

The two first and prominent contenders were Muhammad Younis Qanoni and Abdur Rab Rasul Sayyaf. Both have a Jihadist background, Sayyaf is one of the most notorious Jihadists accused of massacres of the minority Hazaras in the civil war of 1992-1996 in Kabul. Qanoni is supported by the opposition block headed by the former foreign minister Dr. Abdullah Abdullah while Sayyaf is backed by President Karzai. Younis Qanoni comes from a Tajik (non-pashtoon) background while Sayyaf comes from a Pashtoon background. Both locked horns first in the elections of the Parliament speaker last time but Qanoni overcame Sayyaf smoothy, however, this time Sayyaf proved tough on Qanoni taking him to the second round of voting. Both of them failed to secure the 51% vote needed to become the Speaker. Qanoni bagged 116 while Sayyaf bagged 119. Sayyaf lagged behind by 4 votes that could make him the speaker of the second Afghan National Assembly the Wolasi Jirga. The winner, as per the constitution, needs to secure223 votes out of the 249 votes. Now that the two heavy weights are out of the race as a matter of the requirement of the constitution, the light weights are fighting hard but failing each time. Since the first elections for the election of the Chairman/president/Speaker of the parliament, two more elections have taken place but none has yielded any result yet.

This takes the political sphere of Afghanistan to a standstill. Whereas each party accuses one another of using foreign forces to influence the decisions of the representatives of the nation, the scenario that comes out of the present situation has not helped either of the parties in any way and the parliament remains with a temporary speaker/president/chairman. It’s now expected for the parliament to continue with this episode of the drama for at least one more week before anyone is selected to head the parliament for another four years.