And they’re off! There is exactly one month before parliamentary elections are held in Afghanistan, meaning that official campaigns between some 6,000 candidates for 249 assembly seats and and positions in 34 provincial councils are now underway. An essential element to any successful election, free media coverage, is present in large quantities and will be the deciding factor in who wins and who loses given the plethora of contenders. This won’t be decided necessarily on the media’s bias, but by how each candidate’s message resonates with the voters, as JEMB is allowing every single person running the opportunity to run radio and television ads free of charge in regulated equal time.

The UN-Afghan Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) announced on 15 August that the official campaign period for Afghanistan’s Wolesi Jirga (People’s Assembly, the lower house of the National Assembly) and provincial councils is to begin on 17 August and continue until 15 September, three days before the polling date.

While candidates have already been able to hold campaign rallies and distribute posters and leaflets after certifying their candidacy with the JEMB, for the next 30 days they are allowed to start their official campaign using broadcast media through a regulated system.

Candidates are now able to access a “sponsored advertisement” system supervised by the JEMB’s Media Commission, according to the JEMB’s 15 August press release. JEMB Chairman Besmellah Besmel said the system will enable candidates to produce and broadcast campaign advertisements on radio and television “free of charge, courtesy of donors, for an equal amount of airtime.” The system will allow every candidate to have “an equal opportunity to reach voters in their constituencies through the broadcast media,” Besmel added.

Each Wolesi Jirga candidate will be allocated a five-minute slot to be broadcast twice on radio or one advertisement of two minutes to be broadcast on television twice. Provincial-council candidates are entitled to a four-minute segment to be broadcast once on radio or a two-minute segment to be aired on television once.

Besmel expressed hopes for a “lively and peaceful campaign of free expression” and encouraged all candidates to “make full use” of the 30-day “official campaign period to reach voters through radio or television.”

I like the idea, because it prevents the warlord, drug runner, and oligarch types from dominating all of the media time with money they probably made illicitly. With so many candidates, it flattens the playing field so that the quality of their message is what becomes important, not the amount of times it is heard. The funny thing about this is that if each of Kabul’s 701 candidates were to take their air time at full worth, the next month would have over two and a half hours of programming daily dedicated to political discourse. Talk about civic education!

Of course, there are a few major issues that need to be resolved. Harassment and intimidation of female candidates has risen (Check out Athena, “a picture is worth a thousand words.”). Among other things, the job of the government is to protect the rights of its citizens, which means that it needs to redouble its efforts to protect female candidates. This is something that it has promised to do in the days ahead.

Another issues is administration of the elections when the date comes. I wrote last month about how JEMB is facing a monetary shortfall, which in turn leads to mistakes and miscommunications. A lack of a funding was also present during the presidential election, in which: ink for those who voted was faulty and could be wiped off, absence of voter rolls, too few ballots in heavily populated districts, and the inability to do background checks on multiple registrations.

Most of those problems are managerial, but lended to Karzai’s opposition the argument that the results were not legitimate. The reason the presidential election maintained its air of calm was due to the self-discipline of voters and poll workers. Such problems need to be funded and handled properly so that such simple errors don’t occur again.

The last problem, and I’m sure the one on most people’s minds, is how strong the neo-Taliban is and the effect that violence may have on the conduct of the elections. They are not that strong, and any attacks that they try to mount will likely do little to thwart polling. Besides the militant factor, another focus of concern is the running of Islamists in the elections themselves. What happens if they win seats in the parliament? I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Of course, Islamists will run and win seats. However, the appeal of the Islamist insurgency has been falling dramatically since the elections in 2004. While some will win in certain areas, they are generally marginalized throughout the country as a whole. Also, and this brings us back to the very first point, they will have to compete with the messages of other candidates on equal time, and a message of Taliban-like totalitarianism won’t resonate against messages of prosperity and freedom.