Afghan challenger alleges fraud

Source: BBC News

Afghan challenger alleges fraud

Page last updated at 12:46 GMT, Sunday, 23 August 2009 13:46 UK

The main challenger in presidential elections held in Afghanistan last week, Abdullah Abdullah, has alleged widespread fraud.

Mr Abdullah said he had evidence that voting had been widely rigged in favour of incumbent President Hamid Karzai.

The allegations had been sent to the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) for investigation, he said.

A leading group of election observers has also said intimidation and voting fraud occurred in Thursday's poll.

The campaign teams for Mr Karzai and Mr Abdullah - a former foreign minister - each claim their candidate won an outright majority.

'Alarming reports'

Mr Abdullah said his team had been told that voter turnout had been significantly inflated in some areas where few votes were cast, with the extra ballots marked in favour of Mr Karzai.

"The initial reports we are receiving are alarming," Mr Abdullah was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8216809.stm

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For those of us that see Karzai as the Afghan version of Vietnam's Ngo Dinh Diem:

Obama: Afghan Election an "Important Step Forward"

President Obama hailed Afghanistan's election as an "important step forward" for the country.

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/08/21/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5258133.shtml

Karzai rival claims vote rigging

The main election challenger to Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's incumbent leader, has said he has evidence of widespread vote rigging.

Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister and Karzai's main rival for the presidency, on Sunday built on his earlier claims of election fraud.

"The initial reports we are receiving are alarming," he said at a news conference.

"There might have been thousands of violations throughout the country, no doubt about it."

The election complaints commission has said it is investigating 225 allegations of misconduct, far fewer than the number alleged by Abdullah.

Grant Kippen, a Canadian who heads the commission, said that while there were "significant complaints", none were specifically directed at individual candidates.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/08/2009823112940446132.html

but see you've already found that. These elections were just as bent as the the ones in Azerbaijan and Georgia which kept / put the USA's choice of candidate in power.x(

edit - I neutralised the negative which some turd saw fit to enter.

Oh, I forgot! Karzai is "our man" in Kabul, while poor Mahmoud is "another Hitler."

How come our capitalist press is silent about Karzai's stolen election? Where are those that condemned the stolen election in Iran? Could it possibly be that if it is "our guy" that steals an election, we look the other way, and that no matter how fair an election is, if the "wrong guy" wins we will condemn it as stolen? :eyes:

Don't forget that Karzai brought the mass murderer warlord Rashid Dostum to help him win the election.

Cloud hangs over legitimacy of Afghanistan election result

• Rival accuses leader of 'stealing' the ballot
• Government supporters claim landslide victory

Jon Boone in Kabul and Daniel Nasaw in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 23 August 2009 18.40 BST

Hamid Karzai will face a crisis of legitimacy and a legal challenge to his re-election if he is proclaimed the outright winner of Afghanistan's presidential ballot on Tuesday, opponents and an UN official warned today, as his chief rival accused him of "stealing" the election.

In a withering attack on an election process that Afghanistan's international backers are desperate should be seen as legitimate, Abdullah Abdullah pinned the blame on Karzai and his team for what he claimed were fraudulent results emerging from the country's southern and eastern regions. He told the Guardian: "It was led by Mr Karzai. He knew. He knew that without this he cannot win, about that I have no doubt in my mind."

Karzai's supporters, who have been collating their own results from individual polling stations, are convinced that the president has won a landslide victory with more than 50% of the vote. Some are predicting he may get as much as 70%.

But a senior UN official warned there would be "no real legitimacy if Karzai claims to have won on the first round". He said: "If the international community say it is all wonderful, they lose further credibility and are associated with an illegitimate government. And if they say it was fraud then their publics will say 'why are we there then?' Neither way is it a good result for Afghanistan."

The prospect of a protracted post-election dispute is an unhappy one for the US and its main partners in the Isaf force in Afghanistan, Britain, Canada and Germany, who are eager to declare the vote acceptable and avoid the uncertainty, delay and confrontation that could aggravate an already parlous security situation.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/23/afghanistan-elections-hamid-karzai

:sarcasm: