Special Court Asks President to Delay the Parliament Opening

The drama of Afghan Parliamentary elections held last September is in no mood to end soon. The latest reports emerging out of the capital is that a Special Court set up a month ago to deal with the affairs of fraud and irregularities in the September 2010 elections has submitted a formal request to the President to delay the official opening of Afghan Parliament at least by a month. The opening was supposed to take place on the 21st of January 2011.

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The final official results of the September elections were released by the Afghan Independent Election Commission on the first of December 2010, the opening of the parliament, however, found a reluctant Karzai. The causes were primarily attributed to his disliking of the outcome of the result that puts a slight majority of non-pashtoons in the lower house of the Afghan bicameral parliament. One specific case was the dismay President Karzai couldn’t believe to accept was that of Ghazni province where no Pashtoon contestant win a seat and all the 11 parliamentary seats went to the Hazara ethnic, the results of this province has still been withheld from being finalized.

The opening of Afghan Parliament is an occasion that the President opens the parliament for a five year term. This to be only the second Afghan parliament to function and the winners/parliamentarians have come through popular public voting for which they had to campaign extensively for months. However, the elections were marred by worst cases of fraud, voter intimidation, staffing of ballot boxes, distribution of money among voters by the contestants, and using of arms and influences rather than political movements and mobilization. All these forced the Afghan Election Commission to invalidate at least 30% of the votes. It wasn’t enough for the Afghan Supreme Court though, that asked for the cancellation of all results and holding of elections afresh.

The new request has been made by the Special Court Judge who believes that the evidences submitted to the court are so enormous that they could influence the results of elections to a great deal and for the sake of this the Inauguration Ceremony be put off at least for a month. This has created a wave of uneasiness among the winners and especially ones who were deeply involved in the fraud process. However, reservations are coming in from major ethnic groups who have made substantial gain in the elections and who believe that it’s just a conspiracy to undermine the results that have turned out not to be in favor of the presidency.