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Letter from an Afghan in Diaspora,

by Kanishka Nawabi

I am totally overwhelmed to hear the cheering Afghans turned today’s election to a national day of celebration and joy. From Kandahar where people queued in the polling stations from five in the morning to Iran where thousands of women stood side-by-side with Afghan men, all voted for their choice of leadership. The day was blessed by the snow from Bamyan to rain in the east. Phoning many friends in Afghanistan, they informed me of the hope, joy and celebration in this great national day. Fortunately there wasn’t any news of intimidation by any forces whatsoever.

After three decades of tyranny, today is a turning point in Afghans empowerment in the political and military scenes of their country. Today it is Afghans who decide their leaders, not their leaders deciding their faith.

It was really embracing however, that in such a day of national pride almost 14 candidates announced their opposition to the election process due to some technical problems i.e. apparently a problem with the ink used to mark voters thumb. It has to be stressed that UN spent almost 4.5 million dollars for purchasing this substance and neither Karzai nor the Afghan Officials or any other candidate has anything to do with either purchase or use of this substance.

I believe such claims are baseless on different accounts. First of all the election process is not an event organized by either Karzai or the interim authority, but it is the UN and the international community who fund organize and conduct this process.

Secondly, the claim that voters tap on this technical problem and re-voted in different centres is very unclear. No one knows whether the bogus voters were pro Karzi or the rest. I believe the whole shambles by these opposing candidates is yet another delaying techniques to buy time and organize yet another conspiracy to destabilize Afghanistan and benefit from the process, as many of them did in the last three decades.

Finally the legitimacy of the whole Afghan Election is neither the responsibility of the Karzai, nor the Afghan government or other candidates, but the United Nation and the International Community. It is the whole 75,000 national, regional and international observers to decide the legitimacy of the election, not women or men presidential candidates.

I also believe that even if it is proven that a couple of hundred or a thousand voters were involved in this fraudulent process, we have to remind ourselves that another 10 million plus have legitimately taken part in a democratic process after three long and agonizing decades of misery and do not deserve to be told that their votes have gone to ‘Wish Bins’ of some of Presidential Candidates.

I plead to these candidates to take into account the level of discipline, pride and joy Afghans observed in this process. Whether politically motivated or other reasons, as Afghan leaders, these candidates need not to ruin Afghans dreams once more.

However, these leaders need to be reminded that Afghans will not let this national day of pride and joy turn to national day of shame.  

Long Live Afghanistan

Kanishka Nawabi

KP/11/October/2004

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