WaPo reported Twenty-one candidates running in Afghanistan's upcoming legislative election have been disqualified for maintaining links to illegal armed militias and seven more for failing to resign from government posts, the joint Afghan and international Electoral Complaints Commission announced Monday.
This is good. People should be elected because of what they do, and what they say they will do, rather than how many guns they have.The move, six days before the Sunday vote, followed dismay among many Afghans over the commission's decision two months ago to exclude only 11 of nearly 6,000 candidates on the basis of failure to disarm. Six others were barred for retaining official positions. The voting will be Afghanistan's first parliamentary election in more than two decades. The electorate is to choose 249 representatives for the lower house of parliament as well as members of 34 provincial councils that will help select the upper house.
The latest disqualifications did not satisfy human rights advocates who have expressed concern that the field of contenders is rife with warlords who committed well-documented atrocities during warfare that began in 1978. "We're definitely happy to see more names excluded, and to see some mid-ranking names this time as opposed to just district-level people," said Joanna Nathan, Afghanistan director of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based advocacy organization. "But there's still widespread disappointment that the big names are not on there."
Are they disappointed that the big names are candidates, or that their names are not on the list of candidates?
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