Afghanistan Times
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Abdul Razaq Wahidi is one of the young figures who has served in high positions in the past and current governments. His last post was as minister of telecommunications and information technology in Ghani administration. Wahidi was fired by Dr. Ashraf Ghani after serving in his cabinet for several months. The government never managed to find Wahidi guilty during his trial and he was exculpated by several courts. Mr. Wahidi adopted a hard position against some senior government officials based on evidences during his trial which put him against government team. But a few days ago, an absent trial sentenced him to three years in prison when was working in the ministry of finance. This is also a mysterious case and Mr. Wahidi seems to be a victim of the Arg conspiracies.
Mr. Wahidi was interviewed by the Afghanistan Times Media Group before his arrest, sharing his opinion regarding political issues.
He said: “Our people and society are now in better mental maturity than the past. The existence of dozens of media companies, universities, civil and social societies have helped they think about the country more different, deeper and more comprehensive. This mental maturity can prevent tyrannical leadership, a leadership that feels no commitment regarding democracy.”
He mentioned that President Ghani’s all decisions are person-centered, saying: “Mr. President is severely self-centered and has no trust to his close colleagues. For example; the president himself interviews candidates for police district heads, while there are senior officials in the government from his own team and they can do this under president’s supervision. We see that the position of no government official is important for Dr. Ghani and this means that he doesn’t believe the team work and is a self-centered man.
Mr. Whidi said: When we study about different government and political viewpoints in the world’s history, we understand that there was one person at the top who had been ruling monopolistically. Maybe they had achievements, but they destroyed all or the most values of their societies because they didn’t have a deep study in all issues.
President Ghani gave many chances to the armed opposition groups in the past years with his monopolistic policies. This caused an increase in rift between people and government that the armed opposition used the opportunity and became more powerful and is not now ready to negotiate with the government.
“We are in a very critical situation and most of people especially intellectuals are concerned because we have witnessed very hard times in the past years particularly during the years of civil war, Taliban era and now President Ghani’s government.”
Wahidi said that all decisions regarding peace are personal made, adding that: “The government’s policy for Taliban was quite different eight months ago. It refuses to attend the peace process since the process began to seriously go ahead, and chants slogans of opposition suppression, while chances for suppressing of Taliban was provided months ago and foreign troops were more decisive to intensify attacks on their sanctuaries. The government didn’t accept.” He said that remarks made by Hamdullah Mohib, national security advisor to President Ghani against US diplomats in New York, explain the facts that government has a quite personal decision regarding peace and the government team spares no deal and comment even against national interests to maintain its own interests.
Mr. Wahidi emphasized that the government is not trustable by any means, saying that the only way to save the government from the current political and social isolation is that Dr. Ghani gives up his decision to run for second term as president and announces that he does this for the country’s high interests. In this case, people and politicians will cooperate with him to hold a transparent election and he will regain his relatively position in the peace process.
