Afghanistan Will Hold Parliamentary Elections in May 2010

Afghans will go to the polls again in May 2010 to elect their next parliament. According to Reuters, the vote is planned to go ahead on schedule, despite a funding shortfall and concerns that security will be too weak in most of the country for voters to cast their ballots safely and without the rampant fraud that marred the August 2009 presidential election.

Under Afghanistan's constitution, a new lower house must be in place by June 22, and elections cannot take place less than 30 days before that date.

Zekria Barakzai, the head of Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission (IEC) said that the president, chief justice and speakers of both houses of parliament agreed that the elections should go ahead in May.

"The only problem we have right now is how it will be funded. We are talking to the finance ministry to see if it can be funded from the Afghan budget," Barakzai said.

So far, wary international donors aren't rushing to fund an election that could be both unfair and violent. "There is nobody, I mean nobody, stepping up to the plate to fund elections without root and branch reform of the electoral system," one anonymous Western diplomat said.  "Our public back home simply won't accept it."

Even if the Afghan government had the will to push for serious reform, especially the removal of IEC members implicated in the widespread fraud of last August's presidential election, without international support it definitely doesn't have the capacity to minimize fraud and protect voters in the most insecure parts of the country.

In a post two weeks ago, I posited four scenarios for how the 2010 parliamentary elections could play out. Scenario no. 4 was the "hands off" scenario, with the international community largely disengaged from the process. Though some international support will almost certainly be given, the election is less than six months away and there are no indications yet that the international community will be as involved as it was in the last three national elections, or that any of the mistakes of those elections will be avoided this time around. And that's bad news for everyone.