A president who pays to be shown on TV

As if people have not seen and heard him enough over the past seven-plus years in TV, radio, online, newspapers etc Hamid Karzai’s electoral team have been pasting his posters on electricity poles, on bus stations and elsewhere in Kabul and other cities across the country. Compared to other less privileged candidates, the president has also been spending lavishly on massive billboards showing him either smiling or talking.

Interestingly the president has recently out paced other less wealthy candidates through commercial slots at almost all major private TV stations. Apparently Mr. President does not have the free time or is unwilling to record an electoral message for publicity. Instead his rich and weighty campaign office has been relaying cuts from his previous speeches.

So the president has been telling people what he has already told in the past.

Unsurprisingly the president’s campaign office is entirely comprised of former and current senior and junior government employees such as the governor of Kabul and the director of government’s media center. A friend of mine who works in a government office told me how he was instructed by his boss to work in the media section of the president’s campaign office. A well-known state broadcaster, Neyazai Sangar, has recorded all the president’s electoral audio messages apparently in state studios.

Does Karzai really needs these garish and unappealing posters and billboards hanging – lots of them already torn and/or devil-horned – on every corner of the street in Kabul in order to attract voters? He could distribute the funds to miserable families instead – as he did with funds from a ceremony of the Mujahideen’s victory day in April.

Meanwhile other prominent candidates namely Dr Abdullah, Dr Ashraf Ghani and Mirwais Yasini are only chanting a dozen of idealistic and dogmatic slogans to win over the president.

“A servant government,” is Dr Abdullah’s electoral motto. “A new beginning,” is Dr. Ghani’s.

Even these appealing and beautiful mottos seem soulless and sometimes meaningless as hardly anyone can believe that only these can replace the incumbent Karzai.

It is true Afghans will cast votes to elect their president for the second time in their history, but Afghans are yet to vote to someone other than an incumbent.