Not polls but Loya Jirga can save Afghans: Azam

KABUL (MPTA) on Thursday said fair elections were impossible under the present government and called for the establishment of a short-term interim set-up to run post-President Karzai affairs.

MPTA chairman Farooq Azam told a gathering arranged by the movement in Kabul that the Loya Jirga should be called into session to form an interim set-up which should be handed the affairs instead of holding the April 5 presidential elections, keeping in view the security situation.

“The people of Afghanistan want elections, but transparent vote is not possible under the present regime,” Azam told the audience. Instead of going for elections, he said the power should be transitioned to a short-term interim set-up.

The former minister said the Karzai government had not been able to hold free and credible elections in the past, then how it could ensure transparent vote when the security situation had further deteriorated.

Calling the elections “a plot” by the ruling mafia, Azam warned the country could plunge into more crises if the elections were held.

He said elections in insecure areas had no chance and would be influenced by powerful individuals in relatively secure areas.

“No elections do not mean the present government should continue, we want it to be replaced. An impartial and short-term caretaking set-up should be established and tasked with ending the war first,” Azam explained.

He believed if the interim government was brought into being, the Taliban and the Hizb-i-Islami Afghanistan would have no reason to continue the war.

He said the movement had formulated a strategy on how to bring an interim administration into existence and would share the plan with the Afghans, the international community and the Afghan government.

Elaborating, Azam said the plan suggested impartial individuals having a clean past should appointed as members of the set-up which would work for paving the ground for elections, brokering peace with insurgents and doing away with administrative corruption.

However, President Hamid Karzai has ruled out any change in the election timetable and his deputy Qasim Fahim has said there is no alternative to elections for a peaceful political transition.

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