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| President Hamid Karzai |
Afghani President Hamid Karzai agreed to allow the new Parliament to convene for the first time this coming Wednesday. This brings a sigh of relief to the Afghani people and also the international community at large, who poured some 150 million dollars into the election to insure its fairness. I myself wrote in these pages a few days ago that unless something was worked out there would be a crisis of some sorts (Election Fraud in Afghanistan Throws Country into Tumult). Soon after I wrote that, the newly elected representatives issued a standoff with their president, saying they would convene anyway, which would have caused a constitutional crisis since only the President can authorize the convening of Parliament.
Mr. Karzai seems to have understood he over-reached, as he scrambled back to his country yesterday from an official visit to Russia. He then invited 249 elected members to lunch at the Presidential Palace, where after hours of negotiation all but 11 of the members signed an agreement to convene this week.
Well, now that the mess of electing a governing body has been cleared up, all there is left to do is actually govern.
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