New Government and Upcoming Challenges

 

Some notes about the result of election

Instead of declaring the winner of the Afghan Presidential Election of 2014, IEC declared Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai as the president and Abdullah Abdullah as the chief executive of the country. If IEC is truly an independent commission, there is election held in the country, people ran toward polling centers for voting; so it is a great shame. And legitimacy of the government and laws is questionable. The duty of IEC was to declare the winner of the election, not to settle the dispute between the two candidates. Election does not mean that every individual vote for his/her own favorite candidate, and as the result of the election both the candidates be declared as winners, and divide power between themselves. It means that only one of the candidates should be declared as the winner of the election instead of both of them.

Though, the division of power between both the electoral parties paved the way toward a peaceful transition of power for the first time, and the country is saved from a predicted crisis and conflicts; but it could not be ignored that according to the constitution of the country the settlement among the candidates was illegal, and result was declared as the inauguration of national unity government. As the first condition of the Afghan Government, in the peace process, to the anti-governments is the condition they ought to accept the constitution of the country. While the constitution is broken by the candidates, it was also a good idea to give a share to anti-government side as well.

The appearance of the signatures of U.N. Representative for Afghanistan, Jan Kubis, and the U.S. Ambassador James B. Cunningham, as the witnesses, at the end of the agreement signed by both the presidential candidate seems so shameful. And it is disparagement of Afghan Nation. To some extent the sign of the U.N. Representative is acceptable, but the sign of U.S. Ambassador shows that Afghanistan is so-called independent country, and in reality its independence is questionable.

 

Short-term Resolution: Beginning or end of the challenge?

Most of the times Afghanistan is victim of the short-term resolutions that are forced by external factors, and once again, in the issue of election’s result, it faced a short-term resolution. As the result of external forces, there is a so-called national unity government inaugurated in the country, in which power is divided into two equal parts between the two presidential candidates, as the result of which the government will be so weak and will pave the way for the implementation of U.S., European, and neighboring countries’ conspiracies in Afghanistan.

The win-win condition of both the candidates is clearly in contradiction with the Afghan Constitution, and it is obvious that the newly inaugurated government is illegitimate. The new post of executive branch, which is inaugurated by internal and external forces, is not a long-term solution but the foundation for upcoming challenges.

Some Afghans still believe that if both the parties do not have bilateral dispute, the promises that both the parties have done will be implemented. But it is obvious that two parallel powers cannot govern the affairs of the country in such a way that was expected. It is not the concern that only the Afghan Nation think about it, but also both the presidential candidates namely: Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai and Abdullah Abdullah, because there are many upcoming challenges that will cause dispute among them. “Up to what extent the shared government, between the winner and loser electoral teams, will be sustainable and successful?” is a question that no one can respond currently.

The Afghan Presidential Election of 2014, in which IEC was able to suspend the declaration of its result up to six months and after six months declare both the teams as the winners of the election, which is recorded as a global sample. If still the nation expect such a government to work for them, it is a mistake. And by this time the nation should know that they are the victims of great conspiracies, and experiments.

There are still contradictions in the signed agreement between the presidential candidates, which will cause bilateral-conflicts in the future. In fact, ending the electoral challenges is end of one game and the beginning of a new one, which is played on the life of Afghan Nation.

Dr. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai and his team may be happy with the result of the election that their team is declared as the winner of the election, but later on he will know that his activities are limited by various aspects, same as the ones of Karzai. Even, if we do not doubt about the plans of both the candidates, still it is obvious that the newly inaugurated government will not be able to resolve the upcoming challenges in the country.

 

Parallel Structures:

At the first speech of Dr. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai as the elected president of the country, he emphasized that the parallel governmental structures, as the one of Balkh Province and its governor Atta Mohammad Noor, will be removed.

After the bilateral-agreement was signed between the candidates, Atta Mohammad Noor told media that he does not accept Dr. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai as the elected president of the country, and he will not participate in Dr. Ahmadzai’s welcome ceremony.

But in response to Dr. Ahmadzai’s first speech, Atta Mohammad Noor says, that his removal from the post of the government of Balkh Province is not such an easy task that Dr. Ahmadzai will remove him. So Mr. Noor’s team’s 50% share in the government and some other reasons may cause Dr. Ahmadzai the failure of his promises.

The new government may face more challenges compared to the previous one. On one hand, the issues and challenges of the previous government as: Pakistani missile strikes, ongoing disputes with Pakistan, security of the country, corruption, and other social issues remains for the new government to solve. On the other hand, the parallel power inside the government may cause both the candidates the failure of the promises they have done during their campaign.

 

Afghan-U.S. Bilateral Security Agreement

As the electoral challenges ended, the U.S. officials declared that the B.S.A. will be signed within one week after the new president takes the power.  So it will be the beginning of the implementation of U.S. plans and conspiracies in Afghanistan and region.

If B.S.A. is signed with the articles that were presented to the consultative Loya Jirga, which was invited by President Karzai, it will be the first step of permanent challenges for Afghanistan. In the agreement, which some of its articles were called to be the reason for signing it, there was nothing mentioned about the demands and interests of Afghanistan.

There are rumors that as the new president gains power within 24 hours the B.S.A. will be signed. There were many internal and external pressure on President Karzai for signing B.S.A. but he has seen the upcoming challenges for the country behind signing the agreement, and gave the condition for U.S. to show an active action for bringing peace to the country, which U.S. does not want.

But currently Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, in his interview with CNN television channel, declared that as the new president gain power, B.S.A. between Kabul and Washington will be signed within one week. Earlier Dr. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai has also shown interest for signing the agreement, but he may have some remarks about it and feel its responsibility as being the president of Afghanistan, because the agreement seems to be only for the interests of U.S. and there is nothing mentioned in it about the interests of Afghanistan. But Dr. Abdullah Abdullah already expressed his idea about it that symbolize the external forces for signing the agreement.

Dispute in the electoral process and taking long time for the declaration of result was a plan for creation of a weak and challenging government, as the result of which U.S. will cause disputes between the president and the chief executive, and use it for its own interests.

With the inauguration of the new government, there will be many pressures for signing the B.S.A. If it is not studied deeply and the future of the country is not considered, it will be the first step of extreme challenges for Afghanistan.

 

Peace

Everyone in the country speaks of peace, but the most dangerous risk for the peace is B.S.A. as the result of which the U.S. military will exist in the country. And speaking of peace with the military existence of U.S. in the country is just cheating the nation.

President Karzai consequently mentioned in his speeches that U.S. and Pakistan play a major role in the security of Afghanistan. It is the fact that most of Afghans accepted. It is true that U.S. seeks its own interests in the Afghan War, if U.S. was interested in bringing peace to Afghanistan, now Afghanistan would be a peaceful country.

Though Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai promised the nation, and mentioned in his first speech as the president of the country that his first duty as the president of the country would be to negotiate with the Afghan Government Enemies for peace, and declared that political issues should be solved through political ways; but within the same government two policies toward the same issue seems to be a challenge for the peace. As Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, in his latest interview with CNN, pointed to the Afghan Government Enemies that if they keep up war against the Afghan Government, so instead of negotiation the government has to use military against them.