Arab News on Afghan election

Editorial: Afghan election

AFGHANS today vote in their second presidential election since the invasion and overthrow of the Taleban regime. It is a major test of Afghanistan's development. The prevailing opinion outside the country is that the Taleban are again growing in strength, that the NATO-led forces are bogged down in a killing field, unable to defeat them, that corruption is rampant, that there is deep disillusionment with the government of President Hamid Karzai and that Washington's attempts to bring about change has been an expensive failure. In short, Afghanistan is a dangerous, intractable mess. That view, some say, suits the opinions of those in the West who for their own domestic political reasons want to pull their troops out. Will today's vote lead to a situation where this view will have to be significantly amended? All the signs are that Afghans want democracy and that, despite the violence from the Taleban, the turnout will be high. The signs too are that President Karzai may win the re-election. With 40 other candidates standing against him, two of them women, inevitably the vote is going to be split; many voters will opt for the local or tribal candidate. Karzai may well fail to reach the 50-percent threshold to be re-elected on the first ballot. But even if it comes to a run-off vote, it is difficult to see him losing. Only one other candidate is likely to win enough votes to have a chance of standing against him in a runoff, northerner Abdullah Abdullah. But being seen as a northerner (although he is half— Pashtun) is the reason why he cannot win; in tribally hyperconscious Afghanistan, the Pashtuns and some of the other ethnic groups are most unlikely to vote for him. There are two things Afghans want from this election: Stability and prosperity. They want an end to the violence and killings either by American drones or by the Taleban and to the corruption and incompetence that has diverted or wasted so much of the billions of dollars channeled into the country since 2001. They want the money used for its intended purposes: Development and improvement. What they do not want is the Taleban back in power, although they accept the necessity of bringing some of its elements into the political process. These aspirations are inter-linked and can be delivered. But that involves answering a difficult question: Who are the Taleban in Afghanistan? There is no neat answer. Many of the insurgents are not ideologically tied to it. Their grievances are political or economic. Building hospitals and roads, providing electricity, water and jobs would not only open the door to development and prosperity but also could change loyalties and end the violence. Everyone in Afghanistan agrees and says that aid needs to be much more intelligently spent. But so far little is done. That has to change. There has to be reform. Massive numbers of Afghans remain in abject poverty. They provide a pool on which the insurgents can draw. Even so, the danger from the Taleban should not be overstated. It vowed to disrupt the election. The violence has certainly escalated. But it is nowhere on the scale seen in Iraq and, more to the point, the election is going ahead. Japan's hazy sunrise FOR a beleaguered Tokyo government facing elections this month, there is good news on the economic front even if it is unlikely to save it from defeat, said The Independent in an editorial on Monday. Excerpts: Of all the countries expected to lead the world out of recovery, Japan has always been the least likely. Ever since the global economy turned downward a year ago, Japan has been presented as the object lesson of where not to be in, a high-savings country with little domestic impetus to growth, with soaring government debt and an ageing population. There but for the grace of good economic management and heavy doses of government spending, came the cry from No 10, could Britain be. As it turns out, Japan, like Germany (another example held up in London as what not to do), has managed a second quarter of visible, if not fantastic, growth. At a rise of 0.9 percent, compared to the more paltry 0.3 percent recorded by both France and Germany, the decline of 1 percent in Amnerica and the further fall of 0.8 in the UK economy in the period April to June, Japan experienced its first period of growth after a year of dramatic fall and a long-term stagnation lasing nearly two decades. For a beleaguered Tokyo government facing elections this month, this is good news even if it is unlikely to save it from defeat. If only Gordon Brown could hope for as much. But as an indicator of a revival in world trade, it remains much more uncertain. Just as in China and the US, as well as the UK, almost all the economic revival, such as there is, has been driven by massive public spending. There is little sign that the Japanese consumer is moving from saving to consumption in a way that could sustain private investment and imports, and hence aid regional or global recovery. Given the degree of government debt, the state cannot go on spending like this forever. Yet, such is the deflationary mindset among the Japanese, it is difficult to know quite what replaces it. The same dilemma faces Britain. We may hope that the economy is more flexible than Japan's. The fall in output here has certainly been far less precipitous than in Japan or Germany. But any buoyancy we have has been sustained almost entirely from the public sector. How long can this go on and how far the government can hope for other economies to pull us out of recession are questions still to be resolved. Japan offers hope but not an answer.