Aryan

Woman to vote first in Afghan poll -- in Pakistan
07 Oct 2004 13:20:08 GMT

Source: Reuters

By David Brunnstrom

ISLAMABAD, Oct 7 (Reuters) - The first vote in Afghanistan's first-ever direct presidential election will be cast by a woman, and not in Afghanistan itself but in neighbouring Pakistan, an election official said on Thursday.

Polls will open for Saturday's historic vote at 7 a.m. (0230 GMT) in Afghanistan.

Polls for hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees living in Pakistan will also open at 7 a.m., but time in Pakistan is half an hour ahead of that in their homeland, so that the first vote will be cast at 0200 GMT.

The International Organisation for Migration, which is conducting the refugee vote, said it arranged for an Afghan woman to be the first to mark her ballot at a polling station in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, at exactly 7 a.m. Pakistani time.

"This means that she will be the first person to vote in Afghanistan's first-ever democratic election," Peter Erben, who heads the U.N. affiliate's operation in Pakistan, told Reuters.

Around 750,000 Afghan refugees who fled to Pakistan to escape war and strife at home have registered to vote, ignoring warnings not to do so from Islamic militants.

But only 28 percent of this number are women.

Both the IOM and the United Nations, which is helping to organise the vote in Afghanistan itself, are keen to encourage women to turn out to place their ballots and this factor prompted the decision to have a woman cast the first vote.

"We want to stress their right to vote," Erben said. "We want to have strong women's participation."

More than 10.5 million people have registered to vote within Afghanistan itself, but women make up only 41 percent of this total.

Numbers of females registered are particularly low in parts of Afghanistan bordering Pakistan and among the refugees as the populations are predominantly Pashtun, an ethnic group with conservative views on women's rights.

Although almost 12 million Afghans will be eligible to vote -- including refugees living in Iran -- some analysts and NGO workers believe the turnout will be as low as six million, given restrictions on women's rights and worries about Taliban threats to disrupt the election.

"I would be surprised if one in 10 women turned up to vote in the south," Rangina Hamidi, director of the women's programme for the Afghans for Civil Society group, told Reuters.

"The number one reason is social conservatism and male dominance, and number two is security," she said. (Additional reporting by Mike Collett-White in KANDAHAR)

Reet

Dr Massouda, an elected delegate from Kabul
saw this lady talkin to reporters on tv a few days ago...a very determined and brilliant kinda person..
Things are changing for Afghanistan real fast after the Taleban...

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Ray

I haven't understood the headline Woman to vote first in Afghan poll -- in Pakistan

Did the Afghani women vote only in Pakistan?

Did they not vote in Afghanistan also?

If so, what does the headline mean? That it is a surprise that women are voting in Pakistan?

Funny headline.

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