brokers thrown out by parliament Afghan President Hamid Karzai may be able to turn a humiliating snub by parliament into an opportunity to draw up a cleaner, fresher government. Last weekend lawmakers vetoed over two thirds of Karzai's cabinet nominees, but the candidates thrown out include many with ties to power-brokers who helped Karzai win a fraud-ridden and heavily contested presidential election earlier this year. Now parliament has given Karzai an excuse to jettison those candidates himself. Tainted by fraud and with limited results to show for eight years in office, Karzai is nonetheless a skilful politician who has navigated Western pressures and balanced complicated domestic power groups to stay in office far longer than most expected. After the vetoes Karzai said he was surprised and upset, but analysts say he would have been expecting – and perhaps even pleased to see – the rejection of some nominations put forward to pay back political favors from his election campaign. Parliament in fact vetoed 17 of his 24 ministerial candidates on Saturday, with lawmakers apparently relishing a rare opportunity to hold the president to account. The result looked like a debacle, and the United Nations described it as a distracting setback. But the result arguably also handed Karzai the chance to return a better slate without entirely alienating important supporters. “Karzai is not that unhappy,” said Wahid Mujdah, a Kabul-based writer and analyst. “He can select another 17 people and maybe this time he will introduce other people trusted by the international community.” Karzai's reputation was tarnished following his return to office in the controversial election last August. His cabinet selection was seen as the first test of his promises to stamp out state graft in his new term, and he got only mixed marks. Dream team? The international community was pleased to see faces liked and trusted by the West stay in key ministries including defence, interior, finance and agriculture. They all also had decent relations with parliament and were returned to office. But Karzai was criticized over other familiar nominees, many with tainted reputations. Analysts suspect they were named to thank power-brokers who had supported him during the election. “He will take this as an opportunity to turn to those ministers he didn't want in the cabinet in the first place but had to placate,” said a foreign diplomat in Kabul. “And he can now say: I tried my best, but my hands were tied by parliament,” the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic. Even those who do not think Karzai planned any rejections believe he can benefit from the mass cull. “I don't think Karzai would have calculated a plan ahead of time but he now has an opportunity to come out as a national leader,” said Haroun Mir, co-founder of Kabul's Afghanistan Centre for Research and Policy Studies. “He can invite the opposition in and no one can then blame him because he can say: ‘we are in a fragile situation'.” Mir said the president had been so negligent about the vote – visiting southern Helmand province the day it was held despite facing a hostile and fragmented parliament – that it was unlikely he felt he was fielding a dream team. “He did not even bother to go to parliament to introduce his ministers, they were never presented as a team. So the president was indifferent from the beginning,” Mir said. Commander rejected Karzai will not be able to ditch all of those with ties to his collection of sometimes unsavoury backers, none of whom are likely to take the swipe by parliament lying down. A new list expected to be presented later this week will contain some of the rejected candidates, but in different ministries than the first time around, a senior official said. But by the same token the President cannot return to parliament with the exact same clutch of names. Perhaps the highest profile scalp claimed by legislators was one of the few members of the clique that rose to power in the civil war era considered clean enough to join the government. Ismail Khan, the candidate for energy minister, was a renowned anti-Soviet guerrilla leader and anti-Taliban commander in Western Afghanistan. Other nominees rejected by parliament included allies of former warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek accused by the West of war crimes and human rights abuses. Both Khan and Dostum threw their weight behind Karzai's election campaign at the eleventh hour, Dostum returning from exile in Turkey days before the vote and staging a massive rally in support of Karzai in his bastion in the north. Dostum has denied any last-minute deal with Karzai. The West would certainly be happy to see these names go, and many Afghans would also like to see Karzai turn his back on them. Karzai's chief spokesman Omar has publicly denied the president knew beforehand whom parliament would reject, but some say the incumbent had already calculated ahead.
