KABUL - Holding parliamentary elections this year without first reforming the nation's electoral system would be a major mistake, British Ambassador to Afghanistan Richard Stagg warned on Thursday.
In an exclusive interview with TOLOnews, Ambassador Stagg said that Afghanistan has experienced three fraudulent elections, and must not repeat the experience for the fourth time. Britain is among Afghanistan's strongest allies, is a major contributor of financial aid, and has assisted Afghan authorities in past elections.
When asked about whether the national unity government should hold parliamentary elections scheduled for June, Ambassador Stagg said: "I think it would be a big mistake until you have got properly organized and reformed institutions."
"I personally think that it will take quite a long time get to a new arrangement for running an election which gives people confidence, that won't suffer the same problems as the last three elections, all of which were seen by the people of Afghanistan as fraudulent and producing outcomes that were not very legitimate," he added.
The British Ambassador seemed somewhat baffled at the idea that the country would try to hold another cycle of elections so soon after the disaster of the 2014 presidential election, which failed to emerge a single executive for the new government, and instead was forced to end in a power-sharing compromise.
"It is not in Afghanistan's interest to rush into elections, particularly when the last election has not yet been fully resolved," Ambassador Stagg said. "We haven't yet got a government from an election that started on April 5, 2014."
Despite the fact that electoral reform was a key component of the agreement that brought President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah together to form the national unity government, no action has yet been taken on reforming the country's electoral system. Now there is growing clamor for reform among Afghan civil society groups and the international community.
How best to go about that reform remains a question unanswered, though. The Afghan government seems bent on forming a collaborative reform commission, but seems hung up on selecting those to comprise it.
"My personal view is that your interest may be in approaching this quiet slowly and actually deciding through quiet a lot of discussion to decide what is the right mechanism to embed democracy in a slower timeline than people might wish, I think you should focus on quality not speed," Ambassador Stagg said.
According to a member of the committee selecting individuals for the intended Electoral Reform Commission, discussions about electoral reform have already been conducted with national and international institutions, including the European Union and the United Nations. It is not expected representatives from the Presidential Palace, Chief Executive's office and civil society groups will be a part of the commission.
"We hope that in the next week, the Electoral Reform Commission will be formed," selection committee member Muhammad Nateqi told TOLOnews. "Government spokesmen had a meeting with civil society institutions yesterday, where they announced that the commission might be formed on Wednesday."
On Wednesday, election monitoring groups and other civil society organizations were said to have submitted the names of their 11 desired representatives to the Presidential Palace. "We want the national unity government not to keep the representatives of civil society groups in the margins and they must keep them involved in the decision making process," Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan head Yousuf Rasheed said.
The reform commission was expected to be formed after the government's cabinet was assembled. However, with the cabinet still incomplete, it appears now the reform commission has been substituted as a top working priority. (Tolonews)