JALALABAD (SW): Hundreds of protesters on Saturday took to the streets in Nangarhar and Kunar provinces to denounce the Wolesi Jirga (lower house) move of opposing the words of Afghan and Islam on the face of the proposed bio-metric identity cards.
Members of the provincial councils, local elders, religious scholars and civil society activists participated in these demonstrations. Chanting slogans against the WJ members for their opposition to this, the protesters stressed they would not allow anyone to trade on their identity and religion. They warned if the new identity cards did not bear the words of Afghan and Islam, they would not accept it.
The protesters in Nangarhar and Kunar charged the WJ members as ‘foreign spies’ who opposed the Presidential Decree no. 243 on amendments in the Population Census Law with a majority vote.
The Decree calls for incorporating the term Afghan on the face of the proposed biometric identity cards. On Monday, a number of WJ members supported the decree, but others opposed it. When the house voted on the fate of it, Abdul Rauf Ibrahimi, speaker of the house, announced that it has been rejected with 83 votes.
Legally, the Decrees are now supposed to be tabled at the Masharano Jirga (upper house) and finally back to the President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani.
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