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Woman Afghan MP vows to return

KABUL: An outspoken Afghan lawmaker who was thrown out of Parliament after comparing her colleagues to a stable full of animals said on Saturday that she was trying to win her seat back.

Malalai Joya said the country’s constitution did not allow lawmakers to throw her out of Parliament and that she had hired a lawyer who met the Chief Justice of Afghanistan’s Supreme Court.

But Ms. Joya has not tempered her criticism of the lawmaking body since she was thrown out last May.

She said constituents have urged her not to compare Members of Parliament to animals — because it makes the animals look bad.

“‘You have to apologise on behalf of the animals, because you compared these people with those innocent animals,’” Ms. Joya said her constituents told her.

She said she could count the number of honest parliamentarians on her fingers, describing the rest as mafia members and criminals.

Ms. Joya, a women’s rights worker from Farah province, rose to prominence in 2003 when she branded powerful Afghan warlords as criminals during that year’s Loya Jirga, a meeting of Afghan leaders that set the nation’s constitution after the 2001 fall of the Taliban.

She said her goal was to return to Parliament and continue to fight for average Afghans. Her lawyer Mohammad Zaman said he was hopeful Afghanistan’s court system would reinstate Ms. Joya.

“When they kicked me out of parliament I sent a letter to the Supreme Court and the government hasn’t yet made any decision about me,” Ms. Joya said. “It shows the government isn’t paying attention to my case.”

The country’s Parliament was elected in 2005, one year after President Hamid Karzai was voted into office. Elections are supposed to be held every five years — meaning the country should vote again in 2009 and 2010.

Because of the expense of holding back-to-back nationwide elections, officials are looking at proposals to somehow combine the two votes. — AP

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