Afghanistan: "You Can't Bring Change if You Don't Take Part"
Speakers at IWPR event stress the importance of being part of the political process.
Afghanistan: "You Can't Bring Change if You Don't Take Part"
Speakers at IWPR event stress the importance of being part of the political process.
Afghan citizens need to use their votes in next year’s presidential election despite concerns about the current crop of candidates, according to speakers at a panel debate hosted by IWPR in the western city of Herat.
Around 100 students from the privately-run Kahkashan-e Sharq university took part in the November 7 discussion with activists, experts and a local politician.
Next April’s presidential election is seen as crucial, ahead of the 2014 international withdrawal from Afghanistan. But politicians enjoy little credibility, and during the IWPR debate, specific concerns were raised about some of the presidential candidates and their running mates who formerly led armed militias and have been accused of war crimes.
Sayed Hussein Husseini, a member of Herat’s provincial council, pointed out that not all the candidates had such accusations hanging over them, and that in any case this did not undermine the importance of voting.
“If you want change in Afghanistan, you have to vote for one of these candidates,” he said. “You can’t bring change if you don’t take part in elections.”
Asked how it more people could be encouraged to come to the polls, Mohammad Anwar Mati, an expert on social and cultural affairs, said civil society organisations and the media – not just political parties and the elite – should work to raise public awareness.
Some of the students in the audience asked why they should bother voting since in their view, the whole political process was controlled by foreigners and was un-Islamic.
Husseini, denied this, saying that NATO forces were in Afghanistan to fight insurgents, not to impose their faith.
“It was the Taleban’s actions that led to the arrival of foreign forces in Afghanistan,” he said. “The Afghan system is neither Western nor un-Islamic.”
This report was produced as part of Open Minds: Speaking Up, Reaching Out – Promoting University and Youth Participation in Afghan Elections, an IWPR initiative funded by the US embassy in Kabul.
