KABUL, Afghanistan, May 27 — Afghanistan's Parliament on Saturday rejected the president's nominee for chief of the Supreme Court, Fazel Hadi Shinwari, a conservative cleric and close ally of President Hamid Karzai. Lawmakers voted 117 to 77 against Mr. Shinwari, who has held the post of chief justice since shortly after the Taliban leadership collapsed in 2001 and has been widely criticized for an inefficient and corrupt judicial system.The rejection of Mr. Shinwari will be a blow to Mr. Karzai, who had hoped to retain the cleric for his unimpeachable religious standing while appointing new, better qualified judges under him to ensure reform. "He was acceptable to different sections of our community, and even to the Taliban, so he was good for defending the Afghan government against Taliban claims that it is an infidel government and one based on Western democracy," said Malalai Shinwary, a member of Parliament from Kabul, who comes from the same tribe as Mr. Shinwari.
| Incompetent and acceptable to the Taliban? Don't need a third reason. Good going, Parliament. |
Yet the Parliament, which largely supported Mr. Karzai's choice of cabinet ministers, voted against Mr. Shinwari largely because of his fundamentalist views, another legislator, Shukria Barakzai, said. "It was a battle between fundamentalists and intellectuals," she said.
| Stated another way, a battle between the jihadis and the reasonable. |
There was also unhappiness that Mr. Shinwari, who is believed to be in his 70's, has only a religious education, and no certificate of higher education, a requirement under the Afghan constitution, she said.
| Doesn't need to be educated to rule on religious law, does he? Only matters how holy he is. |