Afghanistan Elections: Fraud? Nay or Yay?

[The Vegan Marxist]

I'm truly confused on how to take the latest Afghan elections. Many are screaming "fraud", but my question is, who's doing the most screaming? If we look back at the 2009 Iranian elections, the President now was clearly the legitimate choice by the mass people of Iran. But of course, the US supported "Green Revolution" tried saying otherwise, in which initially failed in the end. Is the Afghan election truly a fraud, or is this another attempt by the US to try & destabilize another democratically elected leadership? In other words, who's doing the most screaming here?

[gorillafuck]

The current elected government is a US puppet. The US acknowledged the election was a fraud because everyone on the planet knows it, and because it legitimizes even more involvement. It's in no way comparable to accusations of fraud in Iran.

[The Vegan Marxist]

The current elected government is a US puppet. The US acknowledged the election was a fraud because everyone on the planet knows it, and because it legitimizes even more involvement. It's in no way comparable to accusations of fraud in Iran.

:confused:

The US wouldn't just acknowledge a election for being a fraud because everyone else knows this. If that was the case then we'd be seeing the US screaming "fraud" on the coup d'etat that took place in Honduras.

[gorillafuck]

:confused:

The US wouldn't just acknowledge a election for being a fraud because everyone else knows this. If that was the case then we'd be seeing the US screaming "fraud" on the coup d'etat that took place in Honduras.
Are you serious? The US did pretend to oppose the coup in the Honduras.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Are you serious? The US did pretend to oppose the coup in the Honduras.

Only for so long, then supported them in the end. I guess we're going to have to wait until more of this comes out to determine. Is there any evidence whether or not the elected leader of the latest elections is a US puppet?

[gorillafuck]

Only for so long, then supported them in the end. I guess we're going to have to wait until more of this comes out to determine. Is there any evidence whether or not the elected leader of the latest elections is a US puppet?
They never openly supported the military coup and throughout the whole time, they said they opposed it in public.

And of course Karzai is an American puppet. He has never substantially gone against the US in any way, he completely tails the US and obeys whatever they want.

"If I am called a puppet because we are grateful to America, then let that be my nickname." - Karzai

[Quail]

Disagree withm elections because nobody can actually represent the people they pretend to represent. Plus, a lot of "elected" governments in countries ythe US war is agaist, people tend to find faith in organisations that believe in eomen having sex with anyone3, which i8s a rare feminist position. I'm drunk btw...

lolwut

[The Fighting_Crusnik]

a Probable "yay"... people need to learn that forcing lifestyles on other people virtually fails each and every time....

[Adil3tr]

Obvious-lay

[Red Commissar]

It's hard to analyze the lower house, the Wolesi Jirga, in the same way we might be able to for other countries. For one thing, all members are officially non-partisan, so they are not listed by their affiliation.

There are 249 seats. 10 of these seats are for a single constituency for Kuchi nomads. Afghan constitution stipulates that at least 64 of these seats have to be held by a woman. Anyone suspected of being connected to the Taliban or a communist or socialist group are forbidden from running.

It is also important to remember that outside of Kabul that in the end these delegates and parties are ultimately aligned to a warlord.

In the last election for the Wolesi Jirga, analysts said that we could see three blocks, roughly holding 80 seats between themselves. One is pro-gov't/Karzai, the other is anti-gov't/Karzai, and the last was non-aligned and could swing either way. As we ran up to the presidential elections, the pro-Karzai bloc grew larger as non-aligned delegates chose to join the pro-Karzai block.

The events leading up to the last presidential election and the aftermath caused a shakeup in support for Karzai. A lot of the warlords and other factions that supported Karzai have begun to get weary of him and began to take a more anti-Karzai position.

There are political parties, and candidates are aligned to one. They just can't run under that party. Though most of the political parties are the usual shade of conservative islamic parties. There is one that proclaims itself to be "social democratic", but appears to be more of a Pasthun interest group.

Secondly, for the most part, Afghanistan is a country where the president holds more power than the legislative, so the make up of it isn't too detrimental to what the president wishes to do. What this election could do is begin to send a message from the warlords to Karzai that they are not too happy with his leadership. They can obstruct its official duties of making and ratifying laws and approving actions of the president to further this, but Karzai's grip on power means he won't be stopped from what he wants to do. The important part though is that he knows that the warlords and his former allies disapprove of him, and that they are creating a more open image of dysfunction for the Americans to see. After all, if the Americans decide that Karzai is undesirable, they would be much more able to have him removed.

Two things people were looking for out of this election:

-Security: Observers were wondering whether or not the Afghan security forces and coalition could create a safe environment for elections. Considering nearly 30 people were killed and many more wounded, we can mark this off as a failure.

-Corruption: In light of the last presidential election's irregularities, people were watching to see if it could be repeated here, especially considering the stakes between pro and anti-Karzai factions. There were reports of ballot stuffing, people re-voting, voter harassment, false voter cards, and more. In this regard it didn't show much different from the presidential election earlier this year.

For us, we should just see this as the continuing instability of the government that is failing to create a consensus among the warlords and other elements of the old Northern Alliance who are attempting to assert themselves over the whole of Afghanistan.