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Afghanistan
The Afghans Have a Referendum on Democracy
2009-08-15
Hamid Karzai's main challenger has had enough of governance by patronage.
By Ann Marlowe
See how much more fun politics can be?
It's another demonstration of how authoritarian regimes, which the Karzai administration is if a relatively benign one, change over time to more stable, democratic governments. Along the way you get 'reformers' like Abdullah who in turn get reformed a few years later.
Kabul, Afghanistan -- It was midnight this past Sunday when I left the house of Abdullah Abdullah, Hamid Karzai's leading challenger for the presidency of Afghanistan. Twenty or so men were still waiting to see the candidate, some sitting cross-legged in the grassy courtyard.

When I arrived at 10:30 p.m., one dignitary after another filed into the meeting room: a finance executive, a counter-narcotics official, a former ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, and a female professor at Kabul University. Lesser notables spilled out into the courtyard of the concrete villa, some in Western garb, some in traditional dress. Earlier, the diplomat brother of the slain Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud came to pay his respects.

These Afghans don't believe the line the foreign press is pushing--that Mr. Karzai has the election sewn up. With 10 days until the vote, they've come to offer help or cut deals, believing that they're backing the winner.

Dr. Abdullah, 49 years old, is an ophthalmologist and a former foreign minister of Afghanistan who entered politics by organizing medical care for the Afghan resistance after the Soviet invasion in 1979. He's running on a platform of overhauling the 2002 Afghan Constitution. He advocates a parliamentary system, political parties, and direct elections of mayors and provincial governors. (They're currently appointed by the president.)
Posted by:Steve White

#1  Can you have a democracy in a country without a demos?
Posted by: Bright Pebbles   2009-08-15 21:16  

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