President Hamid Karzai yesterday said that he would be a candidate in Afghanistan's first democratic presidential elections and that he would try to hold them as scheduled in June.
"Yes, I am a candidate for the presidential post in the upcoming elections," Karzai told reporters at a regular briefing in Kabul.
Afghanistan is due to hold presidential elections in June, under the peace accord worked out after the ousting of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime in 2001, but the UN has warned that elections may not be able to take place as scheduled because of the slow rate of voter registration.
So far 274,000 Afghans, of the 10 million eligible, have been enrolled on electoral lists and of these only 59,000 are women.
Previously Karzai has said the polls might be delayed for several months due to logistical reasons.
"We are trying to reach the date we have set for ourselves which is the month of June or July so we should try to do that," Karzai said yesterday when asked when the elections would be held.
The elections are one of the final planks of the Bonn peace accords after Afghanistan's Loya Jirga or grand assembly last Sunday approved the country's first post-Taliban Constitution.
The document enshrines a strong presidential system of government alongside a bicameral parliament and states that men and women have equal rights and duties.
Karzai said he was happy the Loya Jirga was a success but that more work needed to be done to implement the document.
"Of course we have problems but that doesn't mean we should stop, we should build and reform our government institutions, today we have problems which tomorrow we won't have," he said.
Karzai said two attacks in the southern provinces during the week had been attempts to prevent Afghanistan from celebrating its new Constitution.
Some 12 members of the Hazara ethnic minority were shot dead in Helmand province by unknown militants while a bomb blast in the main southern city of Kandahar killed 15 and left scores injured, mainly children.
Karzai also said he welcomed Afghans who had been living abroad into the country, a contentious issue at the Loya Jirga which debated whether those nationals who held dual passports would be able to serve in the government.
"We need every Afghan man and woman wherever they are to come and work in this country so the question of dual citizenship is of no significance to me where the rebuilding of Afghanistan is concerned," he said. "And I am sure the Afghan parliament will feel the same way."
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
RSS