Parliamentary elections were held in

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...

in 1952. They followed a royal proclamation calling upon the people to elect the eighth

National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the rep ...

, consisting of 171 seats, within three months. As no census of population has ever been taken there were no electoral lists and the elections were held using public meetings in which people voted for the official candidates by acclamation. In

Kabul Kabul (; ps, , ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province; it is administratively divided into 22 municipal districts. Acco ...

there were two opposition candidates, but the government candidates were elected by considerable majorities when the vote was held on 20 April. However, only 7,000 of the 50,000 voters in the city participated. After liberal parties failed to win a seat, they accused the government of electoral fraud. A protest in Kabul demanding new elections was joined by university students, but dispersed by the army on the orders of Prime Minister

Mohammed Daoud Khan Mohammed Daoud Khan ( ps, ), also romanized as Daud Khan or Dawood Khan (18 July 1909 – 28 April 1978), was an Afghan politician and general who served as prime minister of Afghanistan from 1953 to 1963 and, as leader of the 1973 Afghan coup ...

. Several of its leaders were arrested and later jailed, with others fleeing to

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...

.Nile Green (2017
''Afghanistan's Islam: From Conversion to the Taliban''
p163

References

Elections in Afghanistan

Parliamentary A parliamentary system, or parliamentarian democracy, is a system of democratic governance of a state (or subordinate entity) where the executive derives its democratic legitimacy from its ability to command the support ("confidence") of the ...

National Assembly (Afghanistan)

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