KABUL — President Hamid Karzai and Afghan lawmakers appear headed for a major clash after Karzai postponed the inauguration of the new parliament and politicians elected in the controversial vote said they would start their work unilaterally.
The first test in the looming constitutional crisis will occur Sunday, when many of those elected will attempt to enter the legislature, and the government will have to decide whether to order security forces to prevent them.
“If the government stops us entering the parliament building” by deploying police or soldiers, “we are ready to accomplish our goals by laying down our lives,” said Abdul Hafiz Mansoor, who was elected from Kabul. He added: “Sunday will be the day when it is decided whether we will have democracy or autocracy.”
Karzai’s office said late Wednesday that he would defer by a month the already much-delayed inauguration of parliament, which had been scheduled for Sunday, in deference to a special court that is examining allegations of fraud in September’s elections. It was unclear how the court can properly investigate the fraud that is widely thought to have taken place in such a short time. The constitutionality of the court itself is under question.
The United States has backed the outcome of the parliamentary election, seeing the legislature as an important part of the U.S. drive to enhance governance in Afghanistan. Better administration and an improved security situation are key to the U.S. plan to exit Afghanistan.
Karzai has been accused of trying to defang a parliament that, according to the current results, will provide greater opposition than the last one did. Pashtuns, Karzai’s ethnic constituency, lost out in the polls to other groups that are less likely to back him. The disenfranchisement of Pash tuns could bolster support for the Taliban insurgency, which is composed almost exclusively of Pash tuns, the country’s largest ethnic group.
“This is a huge risk for the international community, and it will probably be solved by some kind of bargain between Karzai and the international community,” said Haroun Mir, a political analyst who stood unsuccessfully in the parliamentary polls from Kabul. “The election has lost credibility, and the next parliament will be very weak, as its legitimacy has already been undermined. This is a big blow for democracy in Afghanistan.”
On Wednesday, the special court, which Karzai set up in December, asked for a delay of at least a month in the inauguration of the parliament while it looked into more than 300 complaints from losing candidates.
However, according to the constitution, the election watchdog, the Independent Election Commission, is the final arbiter of such disputes, and it hasn’t accepted the court’s jurisdiction.
