Interview with Democracy International’s Glenn Cowan

Some extracts from an interview with Glenn Cowan, Democracy International principal who is in Kabul for the presidential elections. The interview was conducted on Saturday, Aug 15. with Reuters Television.

Democracy International has been engaged in observing elections around the world for many years. This is certainly the most difficult security environment. We have great concerns about the security and we are very hopeful that the ceasefires that have been asked for will be abided by, and that the voters of Afghanistan will have an opportunity to vote on the 20^th and use the ballot to express their political view.

What is your outlook so far?

There is great concern about security of course, but we are also witnessing exciting real campaigns. This is not the type of environment that one would have expected; everyone thought that there would be no campaign, that there wouldn’t be an excited electorate. We think there has been and I think this is highly contested politics.

There is expectation that the election will go to a second round, if that happened how would it work?

We don’t have any way to know really, whether there will be a second round or not. I think we have to wait and count the ballots and see what the outcome is. If there is a second round there is a constitution provision for how that would take place and I am confident that the Election Commission will be able to conduct that second round in early October and produce an eventual presidential winner.

I am sure you have your research/study, so apart from this political process which Afghan people are waiting to see on August 20, what else is the Afghan expectation? What else do they want to achieve? I am talking about normal Afghan people.

This is the second major election since 2001 and I think this is an opportunity perhaps for the Afghan people to begin worrying about solidifying governance in their country. It is one thing to elect a government, it is quite another to solidify that government to begin worrying about delivering services to the population, I would think. That’s what would be of the greatest concern to the people after these elections.

What does the international community and especially United States want to see from this election?

I think there is no question that what the United States and the rest of the international community wants to see is that this results in a stable government, that the election produces a president and produces a government that is a reflection of the will of the people, and that that government can go on to provide services to its people.

So you are the observers team while they are ? [3.08 mins] have they not faced any problems so far?

Well it’s a difficult country because of the security environment, of course, and we’ve had to be careful and to guard our observers well, but they’ve gotten all over the country. We are going to have a total of 60 international observers here, 12 of them have been long-term observers and have been here for several weeks and will stay for as much as a month after the election. And this is a very robust international delegation. We expect to be able to observe this process and to have good information on what has happened here on the 20^th August and if there is a runoff we will be here for that as well.

If there is a runoff do you have your preparation for that?

Oh absolutely. If there is a runoff election there would be international observers here to witness that process, as much as we will witness the process on the 20^th.

Do you think that the people, especially in the south, will go to vote despite the Taliban threat to kill them?

We certainly hope that they will go to vote, but we will have to wait and observe that process. We will have international observers in the south and if the voters are there we will see them, if they are not there we will know why.