General election in Afghanistan 1949

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The parliamentary elections in Afghanistan in 1949 , the seventh since the establishment of the first elected Afghan parliament in 1931, marked the first free election of the Shura-e-Melli , the lower house of the Afghan parliament.

background

The constitution of Afghanistan of 1931 provided for the establishment of a bicameral parliament , from which the members of the lower house were elected by popular vote. The legislative period lasted three years, and elections took place regularly from 1931 onwards. But this popular persecution was not a parliament in the western sense: there were no parties yet, the deputies were in fact appointed and not elected, and there was practically no parliamentary opposition. The real power lay with the Afghan prime minister , the parliament ultimately only confirmed his decisions.

Electoral system

All men over the age of 20 were eligible to vote , voting was based on a kind of majority vote . The election law of 1931 stipulated that on election day, voters would gather in the provincial towns and discuss the candidate or candidates for their region under the supervision of government officials and religious dignitaries. The candidate that the assembly finally agreed was sent to Kabul as a member of parliament . Only if no agreement was reached was a vote actually taken. In practical terms, this meant that the People's Assembly elected the candidate proposed by the local authorities by acclamation to parliament.

procedure

In 1946 Sardar Shah Mahmud Khan became Prime Minister, who began a cautious liberalization and democratization of the country. The establishment of independent newspapers was allowed and the first political groups arose. The vote of 1949 thus had the character of a real election for the first time: There were several candidates to choose from, some of which were already assigned to loose political groups, even if they were not yet parties. The election winners were not certain in advance, and opposition candidates also had a chance to enter parliament.

Results

As with all early Afghan elections, figures on voter turnout and exact election results are not known, they were never officially published and the archives may have been destroyed in the civil war. The exact number of MPs is not known, this varied from 116 in the first election in 1931 and 171 in the last such election in 1961. It is known that around 40 to 50 of the MPs were in some way assigned to the opposition.

aftermath

The parliament, which was relatively freely elected in 1949, was dubbed a “liberal parliament” in later publications. For the government, unexpectedly, the MPs sharply criticized the ruling system. After lively debates, they passed some liberal reforms, including those on freedom of the press . A diverse, critical press and numerous political groups of various kinds emerged, but these had little influence on the broad mass of the population. In 1952, a first opposition party was finally to be founded, whereupon the government abruptly reversed the democratic approaches. Opposition members were arrested and their newspapers banned, the elections of 1952 were carried out again in the manner of the previous elections.

Web links

literature

  • Dieter Nohlen, Florian Grotz, Christof Hartmann (Eds.): Elections in Asia and the Pacific: A Data Handbook: Volume I: Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia. Oxford University Press, New York 2001, ISBN 978-0-19-924958-9
  • Europa Publications (Ed.): The Far East and Australasia 2003. 34th edition. Routledge, 2002, ISBN 978-1-85-743133-9 ( Regional Surveys of the World. Volume 4, partly online ).
  • Deutsches Orient-Institut (Ed.): Afghanistan since the fall of the monarchy: Documentation on politics, economy and population. German Orient Institute in association with the German Overseas Institute Foundation, Hamburg 1981, ISBN 978-3-88-693009-8 ( Current Information Service Modern Orient. Special number 9).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Dieter Nohlen, Florian Grotz, Christof Hartmann (Eds.): Elections in Asia and the Pacific: A Data Handbook: Volume I: Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia. Oxford University Press, New York 2001, ISBN 978-0-19-924958-9 , p. 504
  2. ^ A b German Orient Institute (ed.): Afghanistan since the fall of the monarchy: Documentation on politics, economy and population. German Orient Institute in association with the German Overseas Institute Foundation, Hamburg 1981, ISBN 978-3-88-693009-8 ( Current Information Service Moderner Orient. Special number 9), p. 10
  3. ↑ a b Dieter Nohlen, Florian Grotz, Christof Hartmann (Eds.): Elections in Asia and the Pacific: A Data Handbook: Volume I: Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia. Oxford University Press, New York 2001, ISBN 978-0-19-924958-9 , p. 507
  4. ↑ a b c d Europa Publications (Ed.): The Far East and Australasia 2003. 34th edition. Routledge, 2002, ISBN 978-1-85-743133-9 ( Regional Surveys of the World. Volume 4, partly online ), p. 62
  5. ^ Dieter Nohlen, Florian Grotz, Christof Hartmann (Eds.): Elections in Asia and the Pacific: A Data Handbook: Volume I: Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia. Oxford University Press, New York 2001, ISBN 978-0-19-924958-9 , p. 509
  6. ↑ Afghanistan, a country study ( Memento of the original from September 15, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gl.iit.edu