Afghan poll's fate hangs on a probe
By Lal Aqa Sherin
KABUL - Partial results in Afghanistan's presidential polls favor President
Hamid Karzai, with Abdullah Abdullah, former foreign minister, trailing second.
Kabul lawmaker Ramazan Basherdost, who is in third place, seems to have
garnered more votes than former World Bank economist Dr Ashraf Ghani.
With a majority of polling stations yet to announce their results, and
investigations into major fraud complaints underway, the contest is still wide
open.
Whoever the winner, unless that candidate wins over 50% of the vote, a runoff
will be inevitable.
Daud Ali Najafi, head of the Independent Election Commission
(IEC), is prepared for such an eventuality. "The preliminary work of the second
round, such as designing ballot papers, is already well under way," said
Najafi.
Overall, election-monitoring groups were satisfied with the electoral process,
despite violence, threats against voters and widespread corruption. They are
quick to point out, however, that though the elections were fair, the freedom
of voters was severely restricted.
"Thursday's [August 20] elections were fair," said Phillip Moran, head of a
European team of 300 election observers. "But they were not free."
Grant Kippon, head of the Election Complaints Commission (ECC), said that over
225 complaints were filed immediately after the election. Of these, 150 have
been sorted through and approximately 35 were assigned "high priority", meaning
that if true, these allegations could affect the outcome of the contest.
The complaints run the gamut from ballot stuffing, tampering with ballot boxes,
problems with indelible ink, non-IEC personnel present at polling stations,
polling stations opening late and voters being threatened to vote for a
particular candidate.
Kippon also says that many of the complaints came from Kandahar, Ghazni, Wardak
and Kunduz provinces.
The ECC investigation process involves teams of 250 investigators in provinces
throughout Afghanistan, who will look into complaints and then send results to
the ECC office in Kabul.
"All complaints that could potentially affect the outcome of the election will
be dealt with in a thorough manner," Kippon said at a press conference, days
after the election.
Kippon and others in the ECC said that they would look into all irregularities,
whether ECC receives an official complaint or not.
The Fair Elections Federation of Afghanistan said that participation in this
year's election was as low as 20% in the troubled regions of the country. The
northern part of Afghanistan saw much higher turnouts while in the south,
voters stayed home out of fear for their lives.
Throughout the country, polls were permitted to stay open for an hour past the
original closing time of 4pm. Analysts on a Killid national radio broadcast
said that people all over Afghanistan were frightened of what a trip to the
polls might bring.
Analyst Ustad Habibullah Rafi said "no positive or major change has come to
people's lives, so people do not want to participate in elections. But what
participation is taking place should be appreciated".
The registration numbers alone tell the tale of how Afghan participation has
changed since the last election. In 2004, 12 million Afghans were registered to
vote. This year the number of voting cards delivered went up to 17 million,
though only an estimated 6.5 million people voted.
In Kabul alone there were many clashes between Afghan security forces and
insurgent fighters. Explosions rocked the 5th, 7th and 12th police districts of
the city. The 8th district was the site of a fierce battle, perhaps the longest
military engagement in the country on election day.
Punch tools - small, hand-held pliers used to indicate that a voting card has
been used - were in short supply. Many of the punch tools that were available
did not work properly and election officials were forced to use scissors or
other sharp objects to mark the cards.
These inefficiencies led to voter fraud. In Takhar province, one man admitted
to Radio Killid that he voted three times with two cards because the punch
tools were not working. He says that no one at the polling station seemed to
mind.
Najafi, head of the IEC, says that he raised this issue with polling centers
prior to the election, but still no steps were taken to rectify the situation.
A lack of indelible ink was also apparent as soon as the polls opened. At one
north Kabul polling station, poll workers delayed the start of polling for
almost two hours while they awaited a delivery of ink.
Substandard ink was also a problematic hurdle to fair elections. Many voters
complained that the ink washed off shortly after it was applied, making vote
fraud an easy game.
Basherdost, who voted at Kabul's Habiba High School, noticed that the ink did
not stay long on his finger. "This is clear fraud," the candidate said, holding
up his finger for journalists to see. Bashardost also filed an official
complaint with the ECC.
The IEC's Azizullah Lodeen first rejected that these things even happened.
After Killid gave him concrete evidence, Lodeen backtracked, admitting that
these things happened but "this is not a common problem. Perhaps it happened
once or twice. Also, these people could have used special chemicals to remove
the ink."
(Published under an agreement with the Killid Group. This independent Afghan
media group and Inter Press Service have been partners since 2004.)
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