Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Friday, March 29th, 2024

What Criteria Will Attract Afghans’ Votes During Presidential Election Campaign?

According to IEC’s schedule, there is 60 days time for candidates to explain their programs and attract the people’s votes. On the other side, it is people’s turn and opportunity to think whether vote on basis of rationality or emotion. Usually, everyone wants to vote for rational criteria such as expertise, commitment, political piousness and good background but practically the emotions win the rationality in Afghanistan. In the last parliamentary elections, many of highly committed people with high qualification of PHD or Master Degree failed but businessmen succeeded to enter the parliament.
There are different factors why people cannot vote for meritocracy; the main factors can include poverty, low political literacy, and weak political culture that propel people vote on the basis of deceiving promises, money, language and racial differences. One of most serious weakness of people is not studying report cart of their favorite candidates. Therefore, it is extremely expected from impartial media and impartial writers to help people use their mind and cultivate a right political culture in Afghanistan.
First of all, people must understand the importance of election, especially the importance of presidential election. In the third world countries, such as Afghanistan, individuals are more important than structures, and so the president’s personality, mentality, beliefs and attitudes will affect the whole political decisions. In this context, a corrupt man can corrupt the entire nation while a righteous man is able to rectify the whole nation.  With looking at history of weak countries, we will come to understand that sometimes one person could rescue a big nation. If we select a wrong medical doctor, he might kill only one person but if we select a wrong political doctor he would kill the whole society. Unfortunately, most people neither are aware of importance of election nor know the criteria for making a right decision at ballot box.
As aforementioned, the poor political culture is one of the reasons that encourage people vote on the basis of race, language, religion and also money. On the other hand, the experience of past elections shows that candidates will use from every option, including money, power, raising differences and buying people’s vote. Therefore, a large number of people have never gone to the ballot box with well-consideration of sensible views, but with the attitudes and interests of their personal, ethnic, linguistic, and regional tendencies. In last elections, there were few cases that young people voted for good-looking faces without paying importance to the consequences of their action. These kinds of example might be more in rural areas of the country. As a result, a large part of the social problems comes from selection of weak leaders who inflicted irreversible harm to our nation. In last parliament election, we sent some representatives who blamed for giving or receiving bribe in first opening days of the parliament.
Today, when our country is engulfed with various social and economic crises, to a large extent we are responsible; we voted for ethnic belongings, they operated with ethnic affiliations. We voted for regional affiliations, they acted with regional affiliations. We voted with linguistic affiliations and they acted with linguistic affiliations. This is how we went down in the midst of social anomalies neither we could reach the national unity and nor peace and prosperity. We are also responsible in front of our conscious! As a free man, if we talk to ourselves, why did we vote a person who created a lot of problems in the country what would be our response? Unfortunately, we do not have acceptable response; sometime unknowingly voted while we were able to check their background. Presidential palace is the place of political decision making and no one can do this for better, unless it is armed with political piousness, commitment and vast knowledge.
The second criterion is patriotism; unfortunately, the current situation and the economic dependencies of our country are such that some patriotic people are victims of their loyalty and attitudes. The candidates for presidential positions should be patriotic and have a popular tendency to bring people and the interests of the people at the top of their decisions. Those who do not have sense of co-operation with people and people-centered ethics cannot be useful and voting of such people is useless. Those who have their family out of Afghanistan they cannot work for this country because they cannot feel the bitter of poverty and affliction and thus, do not have common fate with Afghan residents.
The third criteria is lack of bias, the great misfortune of Afghanistan is that our curators and politicians are committed to personal, ethnical, linguistic and regional interest, rather than national interests. If we want to open the path to nationalization, national unity, peace and social openness, we must campaign for those who are open-minded and able to do something for the country. According to our cultural principles, it is not permissible to build our relationship on the basis of tribe, language and racial differences.
The last selection criterion each candidate is having a coherent and applicable program for solving problems of the country. In order to achieve this goal, the candidates should be able to analyses the root cause of problems. It means, unless a doctor does not diagnose the disease properly, issuance of prescription would not be effective and may even aggravate the illness. Therefore, the tasks of the candidates are rooted in proficient identification of the problems. The programs that are provided without scientific support and non-professional work are ineffective and will not cure the pains of people.