Afghanistan Puts Positive Face on Election Schedule
Voice of America
07/07/2004
Jul 7, 2004 Washington
Afghan and U.N. officials are expected to announce Thursday
the date for Afghanistan's elections. The polls, already delayed
once, were rescheduled for September but no date had been set.
Official optimism over the poll schedule is clashing with private
pessimism that the elections will be held on time.
Despite legal deadlines, attacks on electoral workers, and a
looming winter, Afghan officials still say they believe, publicly
at least, that Afghans will be able to cast their ballots for
a new president and parliament in September as scheduled. Officially,
there is still hope that the United Nations, under whose auspices
the polls will be held, can organize everything in time.
But doubts are now creeping in. Following the
meeting of the joint U.N.-Afghan election committee Wednesday,
talk that the presidential and parliamentary polls will have
to be held separately made the delay seem more likely.
Afghan Ambassador to the United States Said Tayeb
Jawad told VOA that President Hamid Karzai is committed to holding
both polls together. But the ambassador concedes that the parliamentary
elections may have to pushed back.
"We are hoping to be able to have both elections
on time as scheduled. But if there will be any delays, that
delay will most likely affect the parliamentary election,"
he said.
Although the Afghan interim government would prefer
to hold the presidential and parliamentary polls together, Mr.
Jawad says the parliamentary poll is more complicated and needs
more organization.
"The parliamentary election is more complex
because we have issues regarding some of the new provinces and
some of the new administrative units and a formula for the participation
of Afghans living abroad, and how they're going to participate
and how they're going to vote in the parliamentary elections,"
he said.
The polls have already been delayed once. They
were rescheduled from June to an undetermined date in September
to give additional time to register voters and cope with security
headaches from the remnants of the Taleban regime, who have
pledged to disrupt the electoral process. Three foreign and
some 20 Afghan electoral workers have already been killed during
the voter registration process.
Mr. Jawad says, however, that the problems surrounding
the election are primarily logistical.
"The main obstacle right now is really logistics,
the possibility of having everybody registered to vote, and
also working out some other legal and administrative issues
as far as the parliamentary election is concerned," he
said. "Security is really not a main concern at this point."
Afghan security forces are supposed to provide
security during the election, but they are still being trained.
NATO has pledged to boost the strength of the international
peacekeeping force, which remains primarily confined to the
environs of Kabul, from 6,500 to 8,700. International analysts
have said, however, that will be far from sufficient to deter
any determined effort to disrupt the elections.
