KABUL - Taliban leader Mullah Omar, who has been in hiding since the United States invasion of Afghanistan, announced on a videotape broadcast on the Al Jazeera Network today that his party intends to run a candidate in the special election scheduled for April 11 to fill the seat vacated by Representative Jeff Habay. Habay resigned his seat following his conviction earlier this year for ordering employees to conduct campaign business on state time.Political analyst G. Terry Madonna of Millersville University said that a Taliban candidate would have a “viable chance” in the general election. “Clearly, the Taliban party sees this as an opportunity to tap into the public outrage over the pay raise issue and make inroads into the legislative process,” said Madonna. Mullah Omar said that the as yet unnamed Taliban candidate would run on a pledge to reduce the size of the legislature. This would be done “primarily, by killing all those legislators with whom we disagree.”
Many consultants around the country have speculated that Pennsylvania’s antiquated system of government would provide the perfect opportunity for a Taliban candidate to win. “When you take Pennsylvania’s eleventh century style of doing things with the Taliban’s tenth century ideology, you’ve got a true twenty-first century politician,” said Madonna. Reached at home, former Representative Habay smiled when asked if the voters of his old district would be "stupid enough" to vote for a candidate endorsed by a reactionary Islamic strongman like Mullah Omar. “They voted for me four times, didn’t they?” he said.
