Ascetic Karzai rival says he's not crazy

By Jonathon Burch

KABUL (Reuters) - Former Afghan planning minister Ramazan Bashardost lives year-round in a tent opposite parliament and is now mounting a campaign for president that many people consider quixotic and hopeless.

But he says he's not the crazy one. It is his former government colleagues who drive fancy imported cars and live in ostentatious mansions paid for with money intended to improve the lives of ordinary Afghans who he says are truly insane.

"In Afghanistan, values for some people is luxury, corruption and bodyguards. When an MP refuses this kind of life, they say I'm crazy!" Bashardost told Reuters in an interview in his tent on Thursday.

"For this minority you are not crazy if you use a luxury car from the American taxpayers' money. For these people you are not crazy when you are corrupt. For these people you are crazy when you refuse money," he says, waving both arms in the air.

The charismatic, outspoken Bashardost has modeled himself as a man of the people. He runs his campaign for the August 20 presidential election from his tent because he says it makes him more accessible to the Afghan people.

He briefly served as planning minister under President Hamid Karzai, whom he later fell out with after Bashardost openly criticised the role of aid agencies in the country and tried to shut some 2,000 of them down on charges of corruption.

Bashardost then resigned from cabinet, he says, because he no longer had the support of the president. He says he also came under a lot of pressure from foreign aid agencies and embassies.

"IT'S CRAZY!"