Election's Over But Posters Remain

Campaign poster for General Dostum

Torn poster showing candidate Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai

At a municipal bus stop in Kota Sangee Square, 14-year-old Mohammad Samir was busy tearing down a campaign poster for presidential candidate General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek militia leader.

Asked why he was damaging the poster, Samir said, "I hate Dostum's posters because he is not Muslim, and he killed thousands of people."

Defacing election posters - out of spite or for sport - is nothing unusual in most countries. But for Afghanistan, which held its first direct presidential election here on October 9, it can reveal some deep-seated animosities.

In Kabul, for instance, many people still revile Dostum for the role he played in the factional fighting of the 1990s. Samir, a fifth-year student at Mahmood Hotaki school in Kabul, said he learned about Dostum from his father, who taught him to hate the commander.

Some worry, though, that defacing or damaging the pictures of candidates might stir up ethnic prejudice.

Mohammad Azam, 53, of Kabul, said people don’t understand the message they send when they deface candidates' posters.

"When the poster of one candidate is torn and others remain, it harms national unity, encourages discrimination and causes more fighting," he said.

Mohammad Wali, 36, a native of Kandahar province, agreed. "It's not fair if I tear down one candidate's poster," he said. "Because if I do, somebody else will tear down another candidate's poster. It will turn into a conflict. The time for hanging posters is over. If someone likes a candidate's poster, they should hang it in their house."

Sometimes, even the candidate’s supporters are reluctant to take down their favourite’s posters.

Mohammad Omar, 25, of Kabul, had a poster of presidential candidate Mohammad Younis Qanuni in his shop window. When asked why he still kept the picture in his window after election day, he said, "I know the election is over, but I'm afraid that if I take his picture down. Qanuni's supporters will give me trouble, so I left it up."

Ziaurehman, a 23-year-old student in the journalism department of Kabul University, said it should be up to local governments to clear away the posters following the election. "Tearing or defacing posters is an attack on the personality and character of candidates, so they should removed by the municipal government," he said.

But Haji Asadullah, 76, of Kabul, thought posters of candidates should stay up.

"The candidates' posters should not removed," he said. "We should leave them in place so the people of Afghanistan can get to know them and vote for them in the event that we have a run-off election."

Massouda Jalal, the only female candidate for president, has a number of large billboards in Kabul. Hamid, 21, a resident of Kabul, said he thought her campaign advertisements should stay up.

"Massouda Jalal's billboards should stay up so people get interested in casting votes for her in the next presidential election," he said. "Massouda Jalal's billboards are a sign of democracy."

It’s unclear who is responsible for clearing away the posters. According to Sultan Ahmad Baheen, spokesman for the Joint Electoral Management Body, the Kabul municipal government is responsible for taking them down.

"With the campaign over and the elections finished, we said that the public and the Kabul municipality can clear the posters from their shops and the walls of their buildings," he said. "We don’t have a role in that."

Asked by IWPR why the authorities did not take down election posters, Ghulam Mohammad, deputy chief of Kabul municipality’s cleansing department, said, "We have not been given any instructions either by the government or by UNAMA regarding candidates' posters, so we can't take any action until we are instructed."

If given the order, he added, "We will clean them in one day."

Amanullah Nasrat is an IWPR staff writer in Kabul.