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KABUL (Pajhwok): Head of the Hizb-e-Islami Afghanistan (HIA) Gulbuddin Hekmatyar on Saturday registered as the 10th presidential candidate at the Independent Election Commission (IEC).
Hekmatyar will run for the presidency, with Dr. Abdul Hadi Wazin as his first and Qazi Hafiz Rahman Naqi as his second vice-presidential hopefuls.
Born in 1948 in Kunduz province, Hekmatyar turned to politics when he was a student in Kabul Polytechnic University. He joined the movement of Jawanan-I-Muslman (Muslim Youths) in 1971when ideological tensions were at peak between right and left groups.
He was put in prison after two years of his activity with the movement and was in custody since 1974. He went to Pakistan after the coup against former president, Mohammad Daud. After the coup, he started guerilla war by the help of Pakistan against the government of People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA).
He separated from Hizb-I-Jamiat Islami Afghanistan in 1980 and created his own political party Hizb-I-Islami Afghanistan. His party was split into two branches—Hizb-I-Islami Hekmatyar and Hizb-I-Islami Khalis-- after two years of the HIA establishment.
However, he ended his military opposition with the current government by reaching a peace agreement with the Afghan officials. Based on the agreement, Hekmatyar was guarded from any judicial approaches, taken his name out of the UN blacklist and HIA inmates were released.
After his registration as presidential candidate with the IEC, he told reporters that he did not believe in power sharing between political parties and ethnic groups and parties should be chosen based on merit.
He called the incumbent government failed and said, “The current government is the reason of prolonging ongoing war, this system is imposed on Afghans from outside,”
Hekmatyar said that he did not support a federal and premiership based system but the country needed a strong central government run by a president chosen by the public.
The HIA had previously provided an alternative plan for the constitution which is richer compared to the previous fundamental law, he added.
Earlier, Dr. Zalmai Rassoul, Abdul Latif Pedram, Mohammad Hakim Thorsan, Seyyed Noorollah Jalili, Inayatullah Hafez, Faramarz Tamanna, Shahab Hakimi and Mohammad Hanif Atmar have nominated for presidential elections.
According to the IEC, the candidate registration process would continue until Jan 20 and there is no plan to extend this process.
A presidential candidate should be a Muslim, Afghan citizen, having completed the age of 40 and should present 100,000 supporters and pay a million afghanis to the commission based on the electoral law.

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