General Assembly of Afghanistan's National Journalists Union was held on 30th of Sep and 1st and 2nd of Oct 2013 in Kabul City.
In this Assembly 180 members from Kabul City and120 representatives of the ANJU from 20 provinces were invited.
Each member of ANJU in Kabul was contacted one by one and those who had the opportunity to attend the Congress were in participants list.
Provincial representatives of Herat, Kanahar, Helmand, Ghazni, Wardak, Khost, pakita, Nengarhar, Parwan, Kapisa, Panjshir, Baghlan, Samangan, Balkh, Ghor, Dai Kundi, Bamyan, Kunduz, Takhar and Badakhshan were selected among the provincial members of ANJU to be present in the General Assembly .
Following were objectives of the General Assembly .
- Revision and Approval of ANJU Constitution: The ANJU constitution was revised last time in 2002 but by considering the development of media activities in the country it could not meet the current needs of journalist’s society, especially members of the ANJU. Therefore, we revised it again.
- Approval of Code of Conducts for ANJU members: during last years, this union did not have Code of Conducts for its members while the modern journalism required that every journalist should consider ethical standards during working in this profession.
- ANJU High Council Elections: on the basis of ANJU constitution, members for High council of this Union should be elected every three years. The elections should be among the participants at the General Assembly of the Union. After the elections of High Council members, executive council members will be elected by the High Council members.
- Elections and Media Discussions: Although this was not a part of the General Assembly of the Union but the next year’s presidential elections is one of the most important elections in Afghanistan and meanwhile dozens of journalists have already come to Kabul from deferent provinces to participate the General Assembly of the Union, so it was important and necessary to extensively talk on how to cover the next year’s elections.
Planning and the Results:
ANJU Constitution Approval: 2013/9/30
In The morning of the first day of the General Assembly the new drafted constitution of the ANJU was discussed. the draft prepared by committee members of the executive council.
The constitution which contained 40 articles was approved after a long discussion by the participants. Although, the efforts have been made for the draft copy of the constitution to be prepared with standard text, but some opinions of participants in the congress showed that by new ideas every text can be richer than before.
The presented draft was changed in some parts.
For instance, an article about the composition of the high council the draft was like this: “Article No XII: High council has 40 members who are elected by majority vote of the members present in the general assembly.”
In this text the representation of provincial offices for the High council were not considered but finally, after a long discussion it was changed to this one:
“Article No XII:
- The High Council has 40 members who are elected by majority votes of the members present at the General Assembly.
- Presidents of every provincial office whom are elected by the members of each province will directly obtain the member-ship of High Council.
Article No XIII: those founding members, who have maintained their membership in this Union, will directly achieve the membership of High Council.
So, the High Council of the Union will have 73 members, when six of them are from the founders of the Union that have directly achieved the membership of High Council.34 others were elected in second day of General Assembly , while 33 other will have access to this council as provincial representatives.
The methods and time of the elections among the ANJU members in each province is supposed to be prepared by the High Council later.
Some other changes were also made in text of the constitution which are fortunately positive and for betterment of the Union.
Approval of Code of Conducts for Members of Union:
It is noted earlier that ANJU has not had published Code of Conducts for its member. In past few months a committee from the members of executive board of Union had been commissioned that after studying the ethical standards of various Unions in different countries, such as Great Britain, prepared the draft copy of ANJU Code of Conducts to be approved by the General Assembly and for more information its text is available in web page of this Union.
In the afternoon of the first day of the General Assembly the draft was reviewed and discussed. At the end of the discussions the draft was approved with slightly modifications by the members present at the General Assembly.
ANJU High Council Elections: 2013/10/1
On the second day of the General Assembly elections were held in order to choose 34 members for High Council. And for fair elections a group of seven representatives from IEC (IEC Kabul Regional Office) were invited to launch the elections.
Also two of FIFA representatives were present in the elections as observers. Elections had a few steps according to the procedures which was previously prepared:
- The registration of Candidates.
- Preparation of a list of Candidates.
- Timing for campaign.
- Voting.
- Counting the votes.
- Announcement of the results.
According to the procedure each participant of the General Assembly was entitled to run for a seat in High Council. At the end of registration period 37 nominates for 34 seats in High Council were registered.
The whole process from registration of Candidates to announcement of the results were done by the IEC representatives, and ANJU officials were just facilitating and observing the whole process.
It is also mentionable that the elections finished without any problem.
At the end of elections the results were announced by the IEC representatives to the participants of the General Assembly, accordint to the results Mr. Abdul Hamid Mubariz, Muhammad Faheem Dashty, Ms. Najiba Ayoubi,Ms. Shafiqa Habibi, Sediqullah Tawhidi, Muhammad Abdullah, Mir Ali Azghar Akbar Zada, Sayid Muhammad Ali Rezwani, Mirwais Khawrin, Muhammad Sediq Azizi, Muhammad Tahir Muhammadi Yakawlangi, Ahamd Shuaib Fana, Hashmatullah Radfar, Abdul Bari Salam,Muhammad Zarin, Abdul Diyan Ahmadi, Bashir Ahmad Baizhan, Muhammad Hassan Hakimi, Khalil Norzayi, Fairozshan Shairyar, Aziz Ahamd Tasel, Muhammad Atef Moqadas,Ms. Atifa Ghori,Abdul Qadeer Mirzaaee,Hakim Nazari Paryaani, Abdul Mujeeb Khalwatgar,Rahmat u llah Hurmat,Ms. Karima Azizi Ahmad Fahim Haqbin, Rahmatullah Baigana, Shah Hosain Mortazawi, Mir Haidar Motahir, Haron Motarif and Mohammad Sediq Ahmad Zada were declared the winners of the elections.
According to the internal procedures of IEC, an official and detailed report of ANJU High Council elections will be prepared within one week.
Media and Elections Discussion: 2/10/2013
On the third day tow more debates launched in the morning and afternoon.
- In the first debate, IEC spokesman Mr. Noor Mohammad Noor, FIFA Executive Director Mr. Jandad Spin Ghar, Mr. Kawa Ahangar CIFS official and Mr. Safi Hireky from Afghanistan Journalists federation presented their speeches. The debates were supposed to be finished in one hour but Journalists eagerly pursued the discussion and lasted it nearly two hours while still a lot of questions of journalists remained unanswered.
- The second debate was mainly on how to maintain ethical standards of journalism while covering the presidential elections next year. Mr. Khpilwak Sapi President of Shamshad TV, Mr. Farid Naikzad president of South Asian Association for Journalist women, Mr. Abdulah Khinjani the managing director of One TV and said Mohammad Ali Rezwani the spokesman of ANJU participated in the afternoon debate.
This debate was mostly like advisory among the journalists on how to improve their activities during the presidential elections; That Majority of participants present in the debate expressed their opinions.
On the evening of the third day ANJU Congress successfully ended according to the plan.
