After revelation of serious controversies between teams of Reforms and Partnership team of Dr. Abdullah Abdullah and Change and Progress team of Dr. Ashraff Ghani Ahmadzai, Washington once again was forced to intervene in the process of audit and recount of ballot papers of second round of presidential election and sweep political mess caused by the two candidates.
No doubt, the merit of the present process goes to the United States in general and her Secretary of the State John Kerry in particular. The political turmoil created right after the completion of second round of election sparked worries that could eventually divide the country on the communal lines. The supporters of Dr. Abdullah Abdullah openly asked him to announce a parallel government because he was actually considered as the winner of the election if widespread electoral fraud had not taken place in favor of his rival. Despite flexibility of the opposite, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah did not want to cooperate with the rival team as well as Independent Election Commission (IEC) and Independent Election Complaint Commission (IECC). He warned the commission to postpone the announcement unless his demands regarding the complaints about extensive-vote rigging were met. He also set announcement of runoff election as redline before meeting his demands. He said that he would not cooperate with election commissions if IEC announces the result while his rival, Dr. Ashraff Ghani emphasized that Afghan people have the right to know about the destiny of votes they casted in ballot boxes.
Such contradictory stance set the political condition on the roller-coaster. All hopes of people were diminishing about a promising future. There were rumors that there are groups distributing weapons among civilians. Despite disarmament, it is believed that there are enough weapons at hands of people to destroy the achievements of last 13 years over and over.
Despite similar irregularities happened at the first and second presidential election in 2005 and 2009, due to overwhelming presence of foreign security forces, everybody believed that nothing went wrong. Because presidential candidates would not have dared to spoil the process through depending on the muscle of their own respective community. While presently huge part of foreign security forces have already pulled out and the remaining are also on the plan to leave the country except few thousand whose destiny also depends on the bilateral Strategic Security Agreement with Washington. Moreover, President Obama and other involved countries have clearly mentioned that they will pull out their security forces irrespective of the ground situation.
Such a statement and status sent the signal to Afghan civilians that they should not expect much support if anything goes wrong. They fully understand the situation around the world due to revolutionary development of Radio and Televisions which deliver update news to millions of Afghans. They notice that they have no place to go. None of the neighboring countries will accept them and thus forcefully they should remain even if they are burned alive.
Such a nightmare grasped the lives of Afghans. Washington as the largest supporters of the country which spent over hundred billions of dollars during past 13 years as per latest report of SIGAR certainly did not want to give up hands and let Afghan politicians to play by their own old formula---whether being in power or let no one else. Since the announcement of runoff presidential election primary result, John Kerry paid visit twice in order to push a political compromise between the two candidates. Unlike previous time when the intervention or efforts for mediation was followed by criticisms both from civilians and government but many the pages of social networks that Afghan youngsters generally support what Mr. Kerry did. Part of such support lies in the growing negative concept of the two presidential candidates. The long and retard process of the election and the dominant uncertainty about the future and meanwhile the deteriorating economic condition have exhausted people. They blame the presidential candidates and other figures who are involved in the process for such a grave situation.
Secondly people have rightfully understood that none of the candidates will accept the other as successor of Mr. President Karzai. One of them is announced as winner by election commissions, the very legal and authorized institutions to announce the result of election and the other one is claiming that his right was snatched. Despite efforts to make a peaceful transition, it seems that the present polarization does not signal stability in the future. Election Commissions which are blamed of engagement in extensive fraud do not have the legitimacy to continue auditing the ballot papers from Reforms and Partnership team’s point of view. On the other hand, the team of Change and Progress under the leadership of Dr. Ashraff Ghani still continues that both election commission and election complaint commission are the very legal channels to audit and announce the result.
The victims of such a deadlock are civilians. Politicians should be thankful to strong communal structure. It is the communal and tribal social structure that Afghan politicians can easily bring mass support for themselves. If the social structure changed, Afghans like people in other parts of the world would have turned back to political figures and forced them to step down. The ground and hidden anger against politicians is completely visible meanwhile due to their strong communal bondage, if anyone from another community talk about a leader from the other community, the confrontation starts. If a member of the same community criticize his/her leader, whether nothing happens or he/she is opposed on account community should remain strong.