Afghanistan to announce landmark new parliament
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-11-09 15:57

Election authorities were due to announce the make-up of Afghanistan's first parliament in more than three decades, set to be dominated by warlords responsible for years of bloodshed and ruinous conflict.

The announcement of the much-delayed results of the September 18 legislative polls will pave the way for President Hamid Karzai to set a date for the first sitting of the parliament, likely in late December.

Analysts said nearly half of the 249 seats in the new lower house would probably be taken by former mujahedin Islamic fighters who resisted the Soviet occupation and then led the country into brutal civil war between 1992 and 1996.

Also present would be members of the fundamentalist Taliban that ruled the country according to a ruthless interpretation of Islam from 1996 to 2001, when they were removed in a US-led invasion.

"According to my estimate, there should be in the parliament something like 45 percent mujahedin, 20 percent independents, with lots of women, 20 percent democrats and intellectuals...," said Neik Mohammad Kabul from the independent National Democratic Institute.

He expected the remaining seats to go to former Taliban, communists and unknown candidates.

"This will be a conservative parliament, like most of the mujahedin and independents," he said.

Political parties did not feature on the pages-long ballot papers presented to Afghanistan's mostly illiterate population, making it difficult to distinguish a trend in the provisional results.

Nonetheless, US-backed Karzai could find majority support with intellectuals on his side and MPs from his dominant Pashtun tribe also set to dominate, Kabul said.

Analysts have said the presence of warlords and Taliban on the ballot paper could have contributed to the turnout of just over 50 percent, down from 67 percent in last year's presidential election.

"Of course it's a big issue," said Shukria Barakzai, who has won one of the 25 percent of parliamentary seats reserved for women. "They never respected law, they never trusted law. Today they are lawmakers for Afghanistan."

The United Nations, a key financial backer and organiser of the poll, has admitted this is a worry.

"It is difficult, after a long period of war, to have elections and totally exclude people who may have backgrounds that are undesirable," spokesman Adrian Edwards told reporters this week.

However, "I think the important point here is that you're bringing people with such pasts into a forum where they will have to follow certain democratic and peaceful norms," he said.

On concerns the new parliamentarians could use their position to vote in an amnesty for past crimes, he said the UN was working with the government on setting up a system of "transitional justice" to deal with past abuses.

Provisional results for the poll were announced on October 23. Complaints against these initial results were investigated and ruled on before the tally was finalised.

Among the last of the 34 provinces to have its results certified was that of the capital Kabul, base of powerful politicians that have the most clout in the volatile country.

Coming first in the province's provisional result was Mohammad Mohaqeq, an ethnic Hazara warlord deeply involved in the civil war that claimed more than 50,000 lives in the capital alone.

Also on top was Yunus Qanooni, an ethnic Tajik who was Karzai's closest challenger in the presidential vote, and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, accused of war crimes.

Members of the provincial councils also elected on September 18 are due to hold their first meetings on Thursday and will appoint some representatives to the upper house of parliament.