Inauguration or Coronation!
Dr. G. Rauf Roashan
It is almost two months since the presidential election was held in
Afghanistan on October 9, 2004. Although the result was known within
a week of the election, President Karzai and his advisors felt they
needed to play it safe and wait. And then there was the issue of a pending
investigation by an international panel of the accusation of irregularities
in the election. Yet the final verdict was the one much anticipated
by the nation and the world. Afghans had decided on a president that
they had chosen through democratic election for the very first time
in their history. But the president remained un-inaugurated until now.
On Tuesday next week, December 7, 2004, that president would be inaugurated.
Preparations are underway for the inauguration and a huge and powerful
delegation from the United States is poised to participate and give
it the aura of a coronation. The delegation will include men and women
of power within the American administration. It will be headed by the
United States Vice President, Dick Cheney, the Secretary of Defense-
the all-powerful Donald Rumsfeld, Ms. Rocca, the United States under
Secretary of State for South Asia and of course the person best known
as the Viceroy namely Ambassador Zalmai Khalilzad of the United States
will be among the participants.
It will be a day of joy for the president and his supporters. The American
delegation and the UN and the European Union representatives in Afghanistan
as well as the so-called international coalition forces and the American
generals and military inside the country will share the joy and jubilation.
The president has no political party and therefore there may not be
party activists around to sing songs of praise to the party leader or
wave colorful flags or blow horns and release balloons. But the nation
as a whole will be watching, not so much for the ceremony, but for what
Karzai would have to share with them regarding his new administration,
new cabinet, and new plans and ideas. The whole nation will be watching
whether his green cape and pelt cap would cover or uncover the newly
elected leader's true colors in the form of his convictions and promises
that could be measurably ascertained for the much needed reconstruction
and nation building.
Commentators and analysts will try to read between the lines of the
speeches and statements on the fateful day whether this newly elected
president that is relatively free in his actions in the absence of a
parliament, is an independent person who can and will lead the nation
to freedom from regional and global interests and influence and direct
it toward the path for prosperity or would he still be looking forward
to the advice by foreign interests presently operating in his country
almost freely.
Would he and consequently his nation be consulted when planes spray
large areas of land purportedly to kill opium plant, like the recent
incident that caused wide range illness and unhappiness among Afghans
living and working in the countryside? Would he and his administration
be consulted when foreign troops rocket houses in the capital or arrest
Afghan citizens on suspicion of either being or helping and abetting
of terrorists. Or would he show the nation that his administration is
in charge and is actively pursuing an antiterrorist policy while international
help is used only as a support of his plans. Would he be able to curtail
drugs, their cultivation, processing, trafficking and the monopoly of
the warlords, as his own government's programs and not as those plans
that are implemented by foreign interests and or dictated by outside
sources? Would he be able to devise a plan for substituting the cultivation
of opium? Many experts have presented solutions in the form of cultivation
of saffron, hemp etc? Would he be able to begin in earnest the process
of reconstruction because so far almost all physical projects have been
executed by private investment and the government has been almost an
idle spectator? His term would be seen as an important era for uniting
the nation, for safeguarding peace and security and for laying the foundations
of a new democratic Afghanistan ruled by the people.
People would listen carefully to his policy statement about his priorities,
and his plans for a new Afghanistan that has emerged and has, to begin
with, five years to work for resuscitation of its infrastructure, social
and economic institutions and both freedom and independence. His words
in such a policy statement would become part of Afghan history and he
and his administration would be taken up on his new promises for securing
peace and rebuilding of a proud nation in south-central Asia in an increasingly
important region of the world. Would he put in order the priorities
of his nation according to the real needs of the people or would he
take up priorities of foreign interests first and foremost? What kind
of a team would he be able to surround himself by?
And people would watch his actions and would listen to his inaugural
speech, as a person and as a leader entrusted with a task as great as
the great Hindu Kush and as lofty as the old snow covered Tiraj Mir.
Presently and in the absence of a parliament, he is a lawmaker, a judge
and an executive, all in one. The constitution has also given him most
of the powers that are usually assigned to monarchs.
Therefore people would watch whether he looks at his induction as an
inauguration of a president or a coronation of a leader. Would he act
humble as a servant of an ancient nation or as a politician riding the
tide of success inebriated by the euphoria that sets in after people
in millions vote for a relatively new personality. It is attitudes like
this that would decide whether his induction would be recorded as inauguration
or coronation. 12/3/04
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