Kabul: Afghan officials and political figures sought to reassure wary Afghans on Thursday that it will be safe to vote in this weekend's parliamentary election despite an upswing in violence in recent months.
Both the Taliban and Hizb-i-Islami, an insurgent group under the leadership of warlord and former Afghan prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, have criticised the elections and urged people to stay home.
In the southern province of Kandahar — the birthplace of the Taliban — Governor Tooryalai Wesa insisted that recent military operations by Nato and Afghan forces had weakened the insurgents.
"They've got nothing," Wesa told reporters in Kandahar city. "They just have propaganda and threats, so people should not be afraid. They should come out for the coming elections and they should vote their choice for their own candidate."
Tomorrow's poll is the first since a fraud-marred presidential vote last year that left many of the Afghan government's international backers questioning whether they had a reliable partner in President Hamid Karzai.
Much of the fraud in the August 2009 election was tied to insecurity. Polling station lists were only released a few days before the vote because of continually changing reports from security forces about what areas they could secure.
A push to open as many polling stations as possible enabled corrupt officials to stuff ballot boxes for their preferred candidate at stations voters didn't know about or couldn't get to.
Adding to tensions in Afghanistan have been a series of protests in recent days against reported burnings of Qurans in the United States. On Thursday, about 100 rock-throwing protesters moved toward a Nato military base in Chora district of Uruzgan in southwest Afghanistan. The provincial governor, Khudi Rahim, said one person was killed.
The coalition said a protester armed with an AK-47 attempted to access Forward Operating Base Mirwais through a side gate and was shot by a Nato service member. It did not say if the person died as a result.
The government on Thursday sought to reassure Afghans that it will still be safe to vote tomorrow.
"The Interior Ministry calls on the people of Afghanistan to come out and vote in force. The security is fine. We have taken care of the security," Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary said.
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