Afghanistan Parliament Grants Confidence Vote to Sixteen Proposed Ministers

On Saturday, April 18, the Afghan Parliament granted a confidence vote to sixteen proposed ministers of the National Unity Government. According to the Associated Press, Abdul Raouf Ibrahimi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, stated that it can now be said that Ashraf Ghani's cabinet is nearly complete. The Afghan cabinet consists of 25 members, and in the first round, eight members received a confidence vote. With the recent confidence vote for 16 additional members, only the Ministry of Defense remains without a minister. The report indicates that due to disagreements between President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, no minister has yet been proposed for the Ministry of Defense. Delbar Nazari, Minister of Women's Affairs; Salamat Azimi, Minister of Counter-Narcotics; Farida Momand, Minister of Higher Education; and Nasrin Oryakhil, Minister of Labor, Social Affairs, and Martyrs, are the four women who managed to gain the confidence of the Afghan Parliament. These sixteen ministries had been without ministers for the past seven months and were managed by acting officials, which had led to increased dissatisfaction with Ghani's government. The voting in the Afghan Parliament took place while a number of civil activists gathered around the parliament in protest. The reason for this gathering was the lack of attention to the fate of 31 passengers who were kidnapped over fifty days ago on the Kabul-Kandahar highway. The holding of the presidential election in Afghanistan was accompanied by Abdullah Abdullah's protests against the election results. However, the Afghan Election Commission declared Ashraf Ghani as the winner of last year's presidential election. Ultimately, based on an agreement signed last September, Ashraf Ghani became president and Abdullah Abdullah the chief executive. The two took their oaths as President and Chief Executive of Afghanistan on the 7th of Mehr last year, marking the end of Hamid Karzai's ten-year presidency in Afghanistan. This was the first transfer of power through voting in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.