Sarah Childrey
Blog #8
From inequality to hope for true democracy
Out of 380 electoral districts in Afghanistan, over 200 of those districts officials will be replaced. The reason is that these officials were implicated in the widely speculated corrupt elections back in August. They are accused of ignoring electoral procedures or attempted fraud.
After much pressure from the Western powers, mostly U.S., Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai agreed to a runoff with Abdullah Abdullah on November 7th. The U.S. wants to be sure that Afghanistan have a legitimate government in place. Especially because of the possibility of increasing our troop numbers there.
CNN anchor Chritiane Amanpour asked U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is it was possible to eliminate those problem districts from the runoff vote. I was relieved to find that his response was this; “That would be amount to depriving the rights of vote of many Afghan people. Therefore, we cannot accept that methodology.” The goal and commitment of the United Nations seems to be clear; “We have to provide an opportunity where all the Afghan people can express their own free will, without any intimidation, without any threat.” It is definitely a top priority for the second election, the runoff, to be fair.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/10/21/afghanistan.un.moon.amanpour/index.html?iref=newssearch
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