Election of Chairman, Committees
The Loya jirga was convened on 14 December, beneath a large tent at the newly-refurbished technical university in Kabul. In the opening ceremonies, a dozen children in various traditional costumes waved Afghan flags and sang songs of peace, including "We are doves, waiting for peace, we are tired of fighting." Former king Mohammad Zahir Shah addressed the assembly. Then Mojaddedi was elected chairman, winning 252 votes, over Abdul Hafiz Mansoor's 154. Deputies were elected, but excluded women. Many of the 114 female delegates protested at not being represented in the secretariat. To assuage their concerns, Mojaddedi appointed Safia Sediqi to the fourth deputy position and two other women as deputies' assistants.
Members of constitutional commissions, supreme court and other government officials, and members of legal and human rights commissions were allowed to attend, but not vote. Provincial governors and top-ranking police, administration, and military officials were barred from the proceedings. Delegates were divided among ten committees to consider amendments to the draft constitution, which were submitted to a reconciliation council. Powerful militia leaders had been among the groups, often dominating the process.
On the third day, Malalai Joya, a female delegate from Farah Province, was temporarily evicted, having complained that the warlords would still be in charge of the new government. Her microphone was turned off when she suggested that some of the leaders should be tried in an international court. She remained under U.N. protection for several days because of death threats. Ms. Joya aroused controversy when she condemned the allocation of positions of influence at the council to certain faction leaders, including former president Burhanuddin Rabbani and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a deeply conservative Islamist.
Read more about this topic: 2003 Loya Jirga
Famous quotes containing the words election and/or committees:
“He hung out of the window a long while looking up and down the street. The world’s second metropolis. In the brick houses and the dingy lamplight and the voices of a group of boys kidding and quarreling on the steps of a house opposite, in the regular firm tread of a policeman, he felt a marching like soldiers, like a sidewheeler going up the Hudson under the Palisades, like an election parade, through long streets towards something tall white full of colonnades and stately. Metropolis.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“When committees gather, each member is necessarily an actor, uncontrollably acting out the part of himself, reading the lines that identify him, asserting his identity.... We are designed, coded, it seems, to place the highest priority on being individuals, and we must do this first, at whatever cost, even if it means disability for the group.”
—Lewis Thomas (b. 1913)