President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan Is Sworn In, Even as He Shares the Stage --- KABUL, Afghanistan — Ashraf Ghani was inaugurated as president of Afghanistan on Monday, punctuating a season of grave political crisis with a peaceful transition of power that stood as a rarity in a country marked by four decades of war. -- To the relief of the international community, Mr. Ghani’s first appearance as president was full of reassuring touchstones. -- He quickly appointed his rival in the bitterly contested runoff election, Abdullah Abdullah, as the government’s chief executive officer, and shared the inaugural stage with him. It was a signal that Mr. Abdullah was to have a real role in their power-sharing government, which American officials had midwifed through months of acrimonious negotiations. --- Mr. Ghani also declared a halt to the degeneration of relations with the United States under the departing president, Hamid Karzai, who refused to sign a long-term deal to keep American troops in Afghanistan and in his last days in office publicly blamed his allies for the country’s predicament. -- “Now it’s time that we enter a new era of our relationship with the United States, Europe and other countries of the world,” Mr. Ghani said. His aides said his government would sign the troop agreement with the United States on Tuesday, and then a similar agreement with NATO on the same day. -- Seeking to strike a note of social change, Mr. Ghani announced that his wife, Rula, whom he met while both were students at the American University of Beirut, would have a public role as well — another rarity in a country where women are frequently sequestered. -- “My wife worked a lot on behalf of refugees and will continue working for them,” Mr. Ghani said. “Women and youth will have a wide participation in my government.” -- Many watching his first presidential speech were struck by another departure: his willingness to adopt a tone of humility and accessibility at odds with a long-held reputation for arrogance and aloofness. -- “I am your leader, but I am not better than you,” he said, echoing remarks attributed to Islam’s first caliph, Abu Bakr al-Siddiq. “So if I make any mistake you should hold me accountable for it.” -- His professorial and sometimes preachy style at the time left Afghan voters cold, and he worked hard at changing his image during the 2014 campaign, adopting a more populist approach in his speeches. -- Known for a short temper, Mr. Ghani stayed so notably calm throughout the campaign that a joke circulated that he had been taking anger-management counseling. Mr. Abdullah, usually billed as the smoother politician, ended up seeming more mercurial than Mr. Ghani did. --- Known for a short temper, Mr. Ghani stayed so notably calm throughout the campaign that a joke circulated that he had been taking anger-management counseling. Mr. Abdullah, usually billed as the smoother politician, ended up seeming more mercurial than Mr. Ghani did. -- “Isn’t that ironic?” Mr. Ghani said after the first round of the election, on April 6. “If the campaign has shown anything, it’s that my alleged reputation is manufactured. All the campaign events, all the TV interviews, all the debates — can anyone count a single instance of anger or display of emotion, negative emotion, or false pride?” --- Despite the concerns around the six-month election wrangle, the transfer of power by Mr. Karzai, who was Afghanistan’s president for nearly 13 years, was in the end orderly, and Mr. Karzai said he was fulfilling his often-stated ambition of handing over power democratically and peacefully. -- “I’m very grateful to God to give me the power to hand over the power to the new president today,” he said at the inauguration. Officials said that immediately after the ceremony, he moved into a private house near the palace, but outside its walls. -- “I’m very grateful to God to give me the power to hand over the power to the new president today,” he said at the inauguration. Officials said that immediately after the ceremony, he moved into a private house near the palace, but outside its walls. -- Although two contested and turbulent presidential elections in a row have prompted questions about the outlook for Afghan democracy, the departing American ambassador, James B. Cunningham, defended the result after months of turmoil. -- “It is a democratic transfer,” Mr. Cunningham said. “Absolutely it’s a democratic transfer — in that millions of Afghans voted, millions of those votes were validated through the audit process, a significant proportion of fraud was discovered in the audit, and those votes were invalidated. And there is a result, which is a lawful, constitutional result.” - Read More, NYTimes, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/30/international-home/ashraf-ghani-sworn-in-as-afghan-president.html?_r=0