Speaker 1: Okay and then, just a second follow up, what next has to happen before the judiciary that exist now would declare this election to be invalid.

Speaker 2: The judiciary is not supposed to have a role in the election.  It is of course always possible as we have seen in our own country that you could end up somehow getting this into the judiciary, but the way this system has been established with the independent election commission and the electoral complaints commission.  They are supposed to be the final appealable certifiers of the election and so I don’t want to anticipate that it will go in to the judiciary, it is possible, but then that raises a whole other series of concerns because frankly Afghanistan judiciary does not have the level of legitimacy to be in the position to be deciding the election either.

Speaker 1: Okay right here.

Speaker 6: My name is William Bache, I am a consultant in Kabul, I just came from there a few days ago.  My sort of feeling is the elections are really for the west and we have a government that only controls Kabul and there are other 34 provinces, they don’t get a chance to feel they are corrupted elections.  And I see the Afghan leads with Karzai so selfishly only interested in their self interest and their extended families or tribes, I am not very hopeful for the situation there.  I believe that they have to own the country and want to win or want to deliver to their people.  I know the police of the 700 guys that have graduation from the German police academy none have ever been assigned outside of Kabul.  So, you know, I don’t see the desire on their part to do what we think they ought to do, I don’t see the military and police working together.  I am pessimistic and I just want to – you know, is elections really that important? I don’t think there is a military capacity for coo with an [???] type solution you know, unite at that country, military dictatorships  so.  And in the area of justice seems like the Taliban again is the people that administered justice with all their shadow governments at district and province level and that is where the people are going because if they go to the Kabul government they have to pay somebody off that is justice.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that you are right, the leadership, political will whatever you want to call it is the essential and essential missing ingredient and I think that is why you know, we are on a dangerous path I mean I do believe that the worse possible scenario for the United States is to have us with you know, 100,000 international forces in Afghanistan, maybe 120 or 140 after President Obama’s decision while the legitimacy of the government continues to decline and we appear to be propping up a corrupt and illegitimate government.  That really is the worst case scenario and if you believe that as I do then I think you have to work backward from there and say that the current situation is unacceptable and that steps need to be taken to encourage and/or force certain steps on the part of the Afghan government to improve their legitimacy.  You know, the problem with elections.  I have had this argument in an ongoing way with friends of mine who are sort of in the elections community and the problem is that the Americans and the United Nations can never be the ones to say, no we don’t think you should hold elections. We can’t say that. And so it is always then left to this local decision making or what often happens is that we have come to some sort of agreement so in this case it was the *bond agreement, Afghans with international sort of pressure, the constitution with Afghans with international pressure, the London Compact Afghans with international pressure that continued to state over and over again these objectives, there has to be a democratic government, there will be elections, accountability and so on and unfortunately the only thing that scheduled in all of that so you have got anticorruption, accountability and elections, the only thing that is scheduled are the elections.