Certification of upper house completes election process

Final results for all of Afghanistan’s provincial council elections to the 102-seat Meshrano Jirga - the upper house of the national legislature – have been certified, the Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) announced on Sunday in the capital, Kabul. “Now that the Electoral Complaints Commission has reviewed and adjudicated all complaints related to the Meshrano Jirga elections, we are pleased to announce all the elected members of the national assembly,” Bissmillah Bissmil, chairman of the JEMB, said. Newly elected provincial councils voted for upper house members. The certification of these results marks the end of this year’s electoral process. All provinces now have elected representatives to the Wolesi Jirga (lower house), the Meshrano Jirga and provincial councils. “The JEMB has completed its work for the national assembly and provincial council elections for 2005,” Bissmil noted. President Hamid Karzai is to appoint the remaining 34 seats to Afghanistan’s upper house and set a date for the first sitting of the first parliament in more than 30 years. The sitting is expected before the end of the year. “We are currently working on the list of [presidential] appointees to the Meshrano Jirga. We will announce the list in next few days,” Khaliq Ahmad, deputy spokesman in the presidential office, said. The 18 September election for the lower house and 34 provincial councils was a key step in war-torn Afghanistan’s transition to democracy after the ouster of the hardline Taliban regime in 2001. Of the country's 12.5 million registered voters, some 6.8 million Afghans took part in the polls to elect a national legislature and 34 provincial councils for a five-year term. Almost 5,800 candidates contested the poll, including over 2,700 for the 249-seat Wolesi Jirga and more than 3,000 for 420 seats in provincial councils. The elections marked the end of an internationally supported plan for Afghanistan’s return to democracy adopted in Bonn, Germany, in December 2001.