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Afghanistan Election: Hamid Karzai Had not Won Due to Fraud
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by Scott Wu | October 19, 2009 at 10:40 am
75 views | 14 Recommendations | 1 comment
A panel of UN experts announced that Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai had not won the August 20th election, due to pervasive election fraud. It was believed that Mr. Karzai received 54% of the vote, but the new findings stripped him nearly one million votes, pushing the ballots down to only 48.3%. A run-off against Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister and top challenger, may be necessary by mid-November.
The Electoral Complaints Commission invalidated 28% of Mr. Karzai's 3 million votes. This pushed his totally votes below the minimum threshold for avoiding a second round election.
The result pushed Mr. Karzai’s final vote total to about 49 percent, below the threshold needed to avoid a runoff. An analysis by an election monitoring group, Democracy International, gave Mr. Karzai about 48.3 percent. A Western official familiar with the results had predicted that results earlier Monday.
Mr. Karzai is not the only candidate to have ballots invalidated. His challenger Abdullah Abdullah also had 18% of his votes thrown out, but overall he is in a better position compared to Mr. Karzai. He has 31% of the total votes, up from 28%.
Mr. Karzai expressed he might oppose the results, but if the Independent Election Commission certifies the new results, Mr. Karzai would be required under Afghan election law to face a runoff election against Mr. Abdullah.
The head of Afghan's UN-backed fraud watchdog, Grant Kippen, said the scale of cheating was very high. The degree of fraud was above 50% to as high as 90%.
He said that fraud was found in every province of the country and that in the categories the ECC looked at the "degree of fraud was above 50 percent and in some cases it was above 90 percent".
Whether or not an election will actually take place is unclear, as the coming winter and the nation's insecurity will make the election difficult.
The coming winter weather and increasing insecurity in the south of the country would make holding a second round difficult, and many foreign officials have suggested that the two candidates might strike a power-sharing deal, something both candidates have denied.
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Roy C
Vancouver, Washington, United States
Uwe Paschen
Narita, Chiba, Japan
a211423
Clearlake, California, United States
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (1)
at 12:39 on October 19th, 2009
If it is determined that a run off will take place, and it cannot be until the Spring, this presents a problem with our foreign policy. It has been expressed that our commitment will be based on the establishment of a legitimate governoring partner. If this cannot be done now, this could indicate our waiting until next year to make a decision about how to proceed in Afghanistan, and it is precarious how this would play out in the Congress and with the people of U.S., although participation approval in Afghanistan is below 41% currently.