AFGHANISTAN’S LOYA JIRGA OPENED TO PAVE WAY TO DEMOCRACY
KABUL 14 Dec. (IPS) King Mohammad Zaher Shah of Afghanistan inaugurated Sunday officially the nation’s Loya Jirga, or the Assembly of the Elders that has the important task of ratify a new constitution for the war-ravaged country.
The session was opened with the presence of Hamid Karzai, the
American-backed President-Prime Minister and five hundred delegates, including,
for the first time, 100 women from across the country.
"The endorsement of this constitution will guarantee prosperity", the former Monarch, who was given the title of "The Father of the Nation", told the delegates, before introducing Pir Seyyed Ahmad Gilani, the religious leader of the Afghan Qaderyeh clan as the provisory president of the Assembly.
"You have full rights to make amendments and bring changes" to the draft Constitution, added Zahir Shah, who returned last year from three decades in exile.
To those who critic the draft for giving too powers to the president, Mr. Karzai replied that the constitution would offer Afghans a stable future under presidential guidance.
"We are a post-conflict country, we need stability and a durable and sustainable peace", he added, speaking in Pashtun, the language of the majority of Afghan, repeating his insistence that Afghanistan needed a presidential rather than parliamentary system.
Offering a record of the works achieved y his government since he took power two year ago, he said the economic growth of the country for the past year shows a record 30 per cent while some 270 independent newspapers and publications have emerged in the same period.
Observing that the country still has not a national army or police, he called on the delegates to vote the draft Constitution, one that he described as "the best we can afford under present conditions and circumstances".
To other critics who insist that the draft, based on Islamic Shari’a, or laws, would not give Afghan women and religious minorities equal rights, Mr. Karzai, wearing his traditional cloak and Astrakhan, observed that the Constitution must be based on Afghan religious, social and cultural values and in accordance with the wishes of the nation".
The place and the role of Islam that directly touches on sensitive issues as the situation of women and secularity are some of the thorny issues the delegates must debate.
Supporters of an American presidential type that gives the president important powers and those who wants a British Parliamentary regime are pitted against each other, observers at the Loya Jirga told Iran Press Service.
However, the first session was marred by the question of how to elect the Loya Jirga’s president, Mr. Aboo Torab Mostofi, an Iranian journalist covering the event for the Persian service of Radio France International reported from Kabol.
In his rather lengthy speech Karzai also sternly warned Islamic militants who have stepped up attacks and increasingly targeted aid workers and American and international forces, saying terrorists are the enemy of reconstruction and the enemy of any future for our children.
"No matter how many bombings ... no matter how many weapons they bring in -- they can create problems but we will have our defence and face them and they will lose", he added.
Over the past century Afghanistan has been an absolute monarchy, constitutional monarchy, republic, Soviet dictatorship and was ruled by the hard-line clerics known as Taleban.
Powerful factions, international analysts and rights groups say the new constitution, which will set in motion democratic elections scheduled for June 2004, threatens to alienate ethnic groups and fails to evenly distribute power, the French news agency AFP noted in a dispatch from the Afghan Capital.
The International Crisis Group (ICG) said the document, which has been significantly altered from an earlier draft to concentrate power in the hands of the president, was "significantly flawed".
"Afghanistan's nine previous constitutions failed because either they were not enforced or they lacked domestic legitimacy, or both", said ICG senior Afghanistan analyst Vikram Parekh, quoted by AFP.
"The draft now before the constitutional lLya Jirga risks a similar fate".
The current draft constitution, which outlines a presidential system under moderate Islamic laws, does not detail any major power-distribution either within the central government or between Kabul and the provinces.
Delegates displayed the wide ethnic diversity in Afghanistan, with bearded leaders from southeast Paktika wearing huge turbans and cloaks while northern Tajiks wearing flat woollen "pakool" hats and others simple white caps.
Streets around the polytechnic site were sealed off with US troops, international peacekeepers, Afghan national army soldiers, police and secret service agents providing heavy layers of security amid threats from militants loyal to the Taleban regime ousted two years ago. ENDS LOYA JIRGA OPEN 141203