Afghanistan's parliamentary election campaign opened officially on Wednesday with political rallies in Kabul, but the day was marred by an explosion in Kandahar that killed one policeman and wounded 14 others. Officials had already been expressing concern that violence, mostly by insurgents, might disrupt the campaigning for the national and regional elections on Sept. 18.
The explosion was caused by a remote-controlled bomb that was hidden in a vegetable cart and hit a bus filled with police officers driving into the center of Kandahar, in the south, from a training school, said Colonel Abdul Malik Wahidi, the Kandahar police chief. He blamed fighters loyal to Afghanistan's former Taliban rulers.
Nearly 6,000 candidates are running for parliamentary and provincial council seats, which will create a lower and upper house of a new National Assembly and give Afghanistan the first truly representative legislature in its turbulent history.
Campaign posters are already plastered over walls and lampposts around Kabul, the capital, and, with the start of the official campaign, candidates will hit the airwaves, each receiving a free two-minute slot on local television stations, and a five-minute slot on radio.
A US$149 million international effort is under way to prepare for the elections and to make them a "Rolls-Royce operation," said Joanna Nathan, of the Crisis Group, a Brussels-based research and advocacy group. Hundreds of international election workers and aid organizations are educating candidates and voters about the process and organizing the election.
Ballots, boxes and other election materials have already been sent by donkey to the two most remote provinces.
More than 30,000 foreign troops are in Afghanistan, 20,000 with the mainly American coalition and 11,000 NATO-led peacekeepers, as well as thousands of Afghan soldiers and police officers.
The establishment of a National Assembly, after Afghanistan adopted a new constitution and had its first democratic presidential elections last October, would complete the political transition set out under the UN-sponsored Bonn Accords for Afghanistan in 2001, after US troops forced out the Taliban government and al-Qaeda, its allies.
A directly elected parliament would fill a political void that has increasingly been felt as President Hamid Karzai has ruled by decree for more than three years. It should also ease some of the political tension that built up after the presidential elections, when Karzai's opponents accused officials of fraud.
Karzai has repeatedly said that he hopes parliament will work with him and be a check on the government.
The National Assembly will be made up of a directly elected lower house, the House of the People, with 249 seats, and an indirectly elected and appointed upper house, the House of Elders. Voters will cast two ballots, to elect representatives from each of Afghanistan's 34 provinces for the lower house, and for provincial councils. The upper house will be made up of leaders of provincial councils, district councils and presidential appointees. Until district council elections are held next year, the upper house will work with 51 representatives, half its full size.
Women are guaranteed at least 68 seats -- 27 percent -- in the lower house, and one-sixth of the upper house.
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