 Yunous Qanouni, the self-styled Afghan opposition leader, has been elected president of the lower house of parliament, narrowly beating a former factional leader allied to Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president.
| That'd be Rasool Sayyaf. I consider this a "good news" story... |
Qanouni, an ethnic Tajik who came a distant second to Karzai in presidential elections last year, was chosen on Wednesday to lead the 249-seat lower house of parliament with 122 votes against 117 for Abdul Rasoul Sayyaf, his closest challenger. Qanuni is from the Panjshir Valley, the heart of opposition to Soviet occupation in the 1980s and Taliban rule in the 1990s.
| Rasool is a Pashtun, but his heart, assuming he has one, is in Soddy Arabia. |
| You won't know til you do the autopsy. |
He [Qanouni, not Rasool] was a senior leader of the Northern Alliance that helped US-led forces topple the Taliban in 2001 and became interior minister in Karzai's interim government. Relations cooled when Karzai demoted him to education minister in 2002 and he resigned after announcing his candidacy for the presidential election in October last year.
| Taht was when Karzai was trying to curb the power of the Pandjir Valley men. |
Qanuni has tried to form an opposition bloc called the Understanding Front and warned before the election that he might not support all of Karzai's cabinet choices, which have to be endorsed by parliament.
| I expect it'll be a loyal opposition, though I suspect it'll be pretty heavily ethnic influenced. |
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