Saturday, December 19, 2009

When It Comes To Action, No Promises Are Fulfilled

Karzai’s New Cabinet Full of Old Corrupt Folks

By: Zabihullah Noori

After three times postponement in announcing his new cabinet, President Karzai finally destroyed the dream of Afghan people on having honest and clean ministers in their new government.
As predicted by most politicians and oppositions of the Afghan government, corruption has become part of Karzai’s nature and there is no way he will ever want to have clean and devoted ministers in his cabinet. According to the list of ministers published on Pajhwok most of the new cabinet members are old corrupt folks who have served under Karzai and favored him in August 20th Presidential Elections.

Ministr of Defense, Abdul Rahim Wardak, whose son owns a transport company for supplying the international troops in Kandahar, is an example of many. According to Western media, Minister Wardak’s son pays the Taliban for allowing the convoy of his trucks to make it to Kandahar base safely. While Mr. Wardak, as defense minister, sends thousands of Afghan youth to fight the Taliban, his son supports them financially, as stated in western papers and Afghan national media.

Minister of Interior, Mr. Hanif Atmar, whose police posts were used as the signboard of Karzai’s campaign posters, and whose Ford Ranger pick-ups were used to transport only those voters who wanted to vote for Karzai, is again in the list of Karzai’s new cabinet.

Minister of Public Health, Mohammad Amin Fatimi, spread the word out about Swine Flu and dismissed all schools and universities right one day before the announcement of the results of the elections, just to avoid any public demonstration on the unfair result of this fraudulent elections. Now, you can clearly guess who and how one can dare to imagine that Mr. Fatimi will not be in Karzai’s new cabinet.

The profile of corrupt ministers will go on and on, but there are only two ministers in the new cabinet one of whom is fully qualified for his post—Mr. Sayed Makhdom Raheen as new minister of Information and Culture—and Mr. Gul Agha Sherzai, a hard working man who completed lots of development projects in Nangarhar province while serving as provincial governor. Mr. Sherzai is not fully qualified for the ministry of urban development, because he does not have a degree in higher education, but as observed during his service in Nangarhar, at least he is determined to work for the Afghan people.

With only one clean and qualified minister—Mr. Sayed Makhdom Raheen—in his new cabinet, Karzai claims to bring an end to the ongoing corruption in the government.

The only hope for filtering this list is the Afghan Parliament and whether the MPs will give the vote of confidence to these corrupt ministers. The point to note is that half of the MPs also owe their seats to Karzai.

Below is the list of new cabinet published on Pajhwok

1. Defence Minister Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak
2. Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta
3. Interior Minister Hanif Atmar
4. Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal
5. Public Health Minister Dr. Mohammad Amin Fatimie
6. Agriculture Minister Muhammad Asif Rahimi
7. Justice Minister Mohammad Sarwar Danish
8. Education Minister Ghulam Farooq Wardak
9. Women's Affairs Hosn Bano Ghazanfar
10. Communications Minister Amirzai Sangin
11. Counter-narcotics Minister Gen. Khodaidad
12. Urban Development Minister Gul Agha Sherzai
13. Transport and Aviation Minister Dr. Muhammadullah Batas
14. Minister of Rural Rehabilitation and Development Daud Barmak
15. Mines Minister Waheedullah Shahrani
16. Information and Culture Minister Syed Makhdoom Raheen
17. Water and Energy Minister Ismail Khan
18. Hajj and Auqaf Minister Inayatullah Baleegh Darshad
19. Higher Education Minister Obaidullah Obaid
20. Public Welfare Minister Eng Abdul Raza Abdullahai
21. Martyrs and Disables Minister Taj Ali Sabri
22. Trade and Industry Minister Ghulam Mohammad
23. Refugee Affairs Minister Inayatullah Nazari
24. Labor & Manpower Minister Ismail Munshi

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