Vote fraud will hurt Afghanistan

2009-09-09 16:14

Kabul - Leading challengers for the Afghan presidency claimed massive fraud had compromised the elections, raising questions on Wednesday about the legitimacy of Hamid Karzai's expected second term in office.

The president has passed the key threshold of an outright majority based on results from more than 90% of polling stations, which put the war-torn and corrupt country on track for another five-year Karzai rule.

Western allies, who have sent more than 100 000 foreign soldiers to fight a Taliban insurgency and support the government, have been withering in their condemnation of fraud during the country's only second presidential election.

Those foreign governments now face increasingly hostile public opposition to the war and questions over record Western fatalities with no exit in sight.

Karzai's main rival, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah - trailing the president in the vote count released so far - said the election commission should suspend the release of results as the figures include fraudulent votes.

"It's illegal what they have been doing and on top of this I think these announcements include hundreds of thousands of fraudulent results," he told AFP of a timetable clearly laid out before the election.

Clear evidence of fraud

For the first time, the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) said on Tuesday it had found "clear and convincing evidence of fraud".

"I think in two phases you'll see that hundreds or thousands of votes will be discounted or taken out. That's quite likely and that will affect the outcome of the election," Abdullah hit out late on Tuesday.

"I think the damage will be unfortunately a lasting one.

"It will be disappointing for the people of Afghanistan as well as the international community, which whole-heartedly... supported the process, they funded the process."

Partial results on Tuesday gave Karzai 54.1% of the vote from 91.6% of polling stations.

Karzai "welcomed the partial election results announced by the Independent Election Commission and hopes the final results are announced after its required process is over," the presidency said in a statement on Wednesday.

He also praised vote staff for their "impartial" spirit.

The ECC has called for recounts of ballots it says were cast fraudulently and Independent Election Commission (IEC) officials said ballot boxes from 600 polling sites - each with 600-700 ballots - could be "quarantined".

IEC spokesperson Noor Mohammad Noor said the remainder of the partial results would be announced on Saturday. The final result from the presidential election on August 20 is set to be announced on September 17.

"We have a procedure and we are announcing the preliminary results," the spokesperson said.

Investigating complaints

"It is the ECC's role to investigate complaints, and when that process is completed they will give their report to the IEC and we will announce it to the media," he added.

Dark horse candidate Ramazan Bashardost, who has won more than 10% of the vote so far despite campaigning from a tent, called on the international community to pressure Afghanistan's authorities to ensure the vote is clean.

"I think it was not really an election, it was kind of a horrible comedy movie in which the main role of Karzai was played by Charlie Chaplin and Abdullah by Mr Bean," said Bashardost.

"No other country has had the levels of election fraud that Afghanistan has."

"International observers were very positive at the beginning of this process but now they are taking a step back from the election here," the popular lawmaker said.

The laborious tally process has added to concerns about the credibility of the process, already under a cloud because of low turnout, expected to be just 30-35% but still not announced officially.

"The United Nations and the international community, if they think that democracy can be established by fraud then it's OK, otherwise they must denounce it," Wadir Safi, politics professor at Kabul University, told AFP.

The UN, European Union and the United States have been vocal in recent days in calling on the IEC and ECC to ensure the results are clean.

"It is very important that these elections are seen as legitimate in the eyes of the Afghan people and in the eyes of the international community," US State Department spokesperson Ian Kelly told reporters.

- SAPA