The US Ambassador to Afghanistan, John R. Bass declared that “the winner of the Afghan presidential election will definitely have support of a minor number of Afghan people; thus, the Afghans need to think of establishing a more inclusive government.” Referring to low voter turnout in the Afghan presidential elections, he also stated that “the next Afghanistan president must listen to the demands, fears and objections of a large part of the society.” (Ref: ToloNews TV Network)
Comment:
To mislead the US citizens and the Afghan people, the US has always tried to exploit the public opinion under the pretext of Democracy in Afghanistan. The recent Afghan presidential elections provided the most preeminent specimens of such deceptions, counterfeits and impositions; because at this time, the main aim of the US is to settle a peace agreement with the Taliban where the Afghan presidential election acts as the only means to pressure the Taliban and keep the public opinion engaged with nonsense stuff.
In an occupied land where the disastrous war is persistently continuing, elections are implied to be nothing other than a deceptive act, and the idea that the ‘people’s votes will determine their future’ is merely a fairytale of Democracy.
In several rounds of the past elections, the US Embassy in Kabul had been making the major decisions on Afghan elections as what will be the case for this round, too. Of Afghanistan’s 30+ million people, only 9 million had registered to vote, but only 1.9 million voted on the elections. However, after three months of interventions, direct and indirect instructions by the US Embassy, especially Ambassador John Bass, the Afghan Elections Commission eventually released the preliminary results of the election with Ashraf Ghani securing 923,868 votes (50.64%) as the first runner and Dr. Abdullah Abdullah scoring 720,990 votes (39.52%) as the second candidate.
After the release of preliminary results, John Bass tweeted: “It’s important for all Afghans to remember that these results are preliminary, and many steps remain before the final elections results are certified to ensure the Afghan people have confidence in the results.” However, the most shameless human beings on earth, the rulers of Afghanistan and the international community, welcomed the result as an achievement. While, a remarkably large number of Afghans did not take part in the democratic presidential elections that made the Western process suffer a severe crisis of democratic legitimacy. Now the US Ambassador is trying to brag about the failed Democracy in Afghanistan to rescue it from further scandals by speaking of an inclusive government in Afghanistan. Whereas in the 2014 elections, the US herself established the current National Unity Government (NUG) with the slogans of unity government in the aftermath of the elections which not only led Afghanistan towards countrywide divisions intensifying ethnic and tribal strife, but also made Afghanistan as one of the bloodiest countries in the history. Consequently, the government of which the US Ambassador speaks will bring nothing but severe crisis to Afghanistan.
In fact, the final results of Afghan presidential elections directly await the outcomes of the US-Taliban peace talks. So, if the peace talks accomplish the results that are in line with the ends of the US, the entire elections process will inevitably be disregarded, and if not, the next government will be established on the basis of this defective and illegitimate elections process.
As a result, the US Ambassador who speaks of an inclusive national government is not meant to involve the real representatives of the people in the power so they would address the people’s problems. In fact, the goal behind the so-called inclusive government is for involving the US-affiliated leaders from different ethnic groups of Afghanistan in the power so they would secure the US’ interests and aims in Afghanistan. Such a government would better be named as the ‘Government of the US-affiliated Democrats’ other than the ‘Inclusive Government’.
Saifullah Mustanir
Director of the Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir in Wilayah Afghanistan