Karzai eyes obedient parliament amid fears of fraud (Feature)

By Farhad Peikar Sep 15, 2010, 4:03 GMT

Kabul - Memories of last year's fraud-scarred presidential elections are fresh in the minds of Afghans as they prepared to vote Saturday for new parliamentarians.

The fraud was so massive that a UN-backed watchdog threw out one-third of President Hamid Karzai's votes and pushed the election to a second round. But he was declared the winner when his main opponent dropped out, saying there was no assurance that fraud would not be repeated.

The parliamentary election was delayed from May to address some of the concerns from the presidential voting process.

The Independent Election Commission chairman and its chief of operations, who were widely accused of engineering the fraud, were replaced and new safeguards instituted.

But despite the reforms, several candidates as well as local and international observers said poor security would allow Karzai's allies to interfere and control voting in many areas.

'Indications are strong that the president's entourage has been mobilizing influential powerbrokers and government officials in an attempt to arrive at a more pliable parliament,' said a report by the Afghanistan Analysts Network, an independent research organization.

The report predicted the election would be 'messy, fiercely contested and manipulated.'

Wadir Safi, a political analyst and Kabul University professor, said Karzai's authority was severely undermined by the former parliament, which had become a centre of defiance in his second term.

'It is an opportunity for the president to try to have his own appointees injected in the parliament and spend the rest of his time in office without any problem from the lawmakers,' he said.

In the past year, legislators rejected dozens of Karzai's ministerial appointees and voted against several government proposals, including a new election law that would have given the president power to control the vote.

'We have witnessed that despite parliament's countless failings, it certainly was a challenge or at least a headache for the executive,' said Janan Musazai, a candidate from Kabul.

'I think there will be attempts by the government to influence the elections and to elect representatives that the government believes will say yes when the government tells them to say yes,' he said.

Several candidates said the president was trying to bring pro-Taliban candidates into the parliament. Most of Karzai's political rivals are former members of the Northern Alliance, which fought the Taliban for years before the Taliban regime was ousted in 2001 in a US-led invasion.

'I have enough evidence that government officials, including close aides of the president in Kabul and in the provinces, provide some certain candidates with money and other means to enable them to win a seat in the elections,' said one Kabul legislator who requested anonymity.

But Karzai's aides rejected allegations that the government would interfere in the vote. Spokesman Siamak Herawi said the president had recently replaced several provincial officials who were suspected of supporting certain candidates.

The election commission decided that it was too dangerous to open more than 1,000 of the country's 6,835 polling stations where observers are afraid to go to monitor the vote.

The commission also said that it had registered 235,000 election observers, candidate agents and journalists to ensure that the vote is free and fair. Hundreds of international observers are also expected to be deployed for the elections, most of them in secure provinces.

The election is seen as a test for the United States and other NATO countries that have around 150,000 troops fighting the Taliban.

The challenge for US President Barack Obama's government, which endorsed Karzai's re-election, is to show the American public that the vote is fair and worth the price the US is paying in the war. At least 330 US soldiers have been killed so far this year, more than double the death toll of 2008.

The vote is also seen as a test of stability in Afghanistan before Obama was expected to conduct a US war strategy review in December, which is to gauge the pace and scale of US troop withdrawals scheduled to begin next year.