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Dec. 30, 2005
B.C. Jew aids Afghans
Fruman helps with first democratic election.
PAT JOHNSON
Afghan voters chose from among 6,000 candidates representing 70
political parties in that country's democratic election in September.
Wading through the list – which makes Vancouver's civic ballot
look like a haiku – was a challenge for the voters, most of
whom are illiterate. But it was an even bigger challenge for Sheila
Fruman, the Vancouver woman who headed the United Nations team that
handled the logistics for the vote.
Fruman, a longtime community political activist and former communications
director for Mike Harcourt, the former B.C. premier, returned last
month from her seven-month stint in Kabul, which she called "an
overwhelming and awe-inspiring experience."
With her UN team, Fruman was responsible for political party and
candidate services, meaning she oversaw the nomination process of
the thousands of candidates and managed the accreditation of 1,000
media organizations and 240,000 observers, including Afghan candidates‚
representatives and international observers.
Though Fruman has worked in Canadian elections for many years, this
was a different experience, to say the least.
Since the vast majority of Afghans are illiterate, she said, each
candidate was assigned a symbol which appeared on the ballot, along
with a photograph of the candidate and their name.
Fruman also managed the "gender unit," which implemented
the government's commitment to ensure that fully 25 per cent of
the parliamentary seats were reserved for female candidates.
"Keeping in mind that this is a very conservative Muslim culture,
combined with the fact that the government had passed a law creating
a 25 per cent quota of reserved seats for women on the ballot, there
was a lot of work to be done to encourage women to run," Fruman
said. "Some of them, their lives were threatened just for running.
Some of them had threats of burning down their homes. Many people
had to walk for days just to get to a nomination centre and women
can't travel alone there. They always must be in the company of
a male, usually a family member, if not a husband. They couldn't
campaign in public, so they were at a considerable disadvantage
in many ways."
One of the hardest aspects of the work was to see how women have
been oppressed, Fruman said.
"I'm including everything from the clothing they have to wear
to the severe restrictions on their participation in public life,"
said Fruman. "It's improving but, at the same time, I think
it has to be recognized that, in the face of such restrictions,
the government passed some of the most progressive legislation in
the world regarding the participation of women in elections."
Afghanistan, as a result, now has one of the highest proportions
of female representatives in government of any country in the world.
In a country with no recent democratic history, massive illiteracy,
little infrastructure or electricity and comprised overwhelmingly
of remote mountainous terrain, camels and donkeys were employed
to carry the ballots and voting materials to many of the voting
centres. The successful completion of an election of this scale
and reputability is an historic achievement, Fruman said.
"The challenges were massive," she said. "It was
a massive undertaking and a major achievement that it all was completed
on time, on budget and [was], by all accounts, a free and fair election."
There are an inordinate number of Canadians working in international
democratic development, but Fruman was surrounded by a diverse crowd.
"One of the most amazing and interesting and inspiring elements
for me of this whole experience was the mix of people from around
the world who came to work on this election," said Fruman,
who is an officer of Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Region. Being
Jewish in a country that is almost devoid of Jews was not an issue,
she said.
"Keep in mind, all of the staff worked on a compound that was
highly secured and guarded and included people from dozens of countries
and every religion," she said.
"We were not able to really mingle with Afghan society,"
said Fruman. "Everywhere we went we had to have security personnel
with us, so our social relations were really with the international
community. Of course, as a Jew, I couldn't help but notice being
in a country like Canada, with such a clear separation of church
and state, with a country like Afghanistan, where religion is such
a dominant feature of everyday existence."
Another feature of Afghan life is the omnipresence of violent threats.
Numerous explosions occurred along the road to the electoral compound
and, on one occasion, the media centre was targeted with a rocket
– when Fruman was inside – but the rocket fell afield
of its target and did no damage. Not so a suicide bombing outside
the compound shortly after Fruman left to return home to Canada
and, in a separate incident earlier this year, when an Internet
café was bombed, killing one of Fruman's UN colleagues. There
was a suicide bombing just outside the compound after Fruman left,
though the intended target was a nearby military installation, not
the electoral compound.
Though the election went off as planned, hopes for the future are
still guarded.
"While the election itself was successful, in that an election
was held following international standards for free and fair elections,
the real success, the long-term success of the election will be
determined by the success of the parliament," said Fruman.
She hopes the international community will stay and continue to
help Afghanistan develop.
"For me, one of the most challenging features of doing international
work of this kind is coming home and seeing the disparity between
how life is here and how it is in much of the rest of the world,"
she said. Canada is not without its social problems, she notes,
but we should not be complacent about our relative comfort.
"We must not forget that our lifestyle and the freedoms we
have and the secure life we have is not how most of the world lives,"
she said.
Pat Johnson is editor of MVOX Multicultural Digest, www.mvox.ca.
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