Hamid Karzai clinched a majority of the votes cast in Afghanistan’s first presidential election, near-complete results showed today, making him all but certain of becoming the war-ravaged nation’s first democratically elected leader.
Still, rivals to the US-backed Karzai said they would not concede before an investigation of alleged irregularities is completed and all the votes tallied. By this evening, Karzai had received 4,240,041 votes, more than half of the estimated 8,129,935 valid votes cast in the October 9 ballot, the joint UN-Afghan electoral board said.
That means that even if all the remaining estimated votes went to other candidates, he would still get more than the 50% necessary to avoid a runoff.With 7,666,529 valid votes – or 94.3% of the total – counted, Karzai had received 55.3%, 39 percentage points ahead of his nearest rival, former education minister Yunus Qanooni.
Karzai’s campaign spokesman said today’s figures confirmed optimism that the interim leader would triumph when the final results are released in the next few days.“I’m going to see his excellency this evening to see when to start the celebrations,” Hamed Elmi told The Associated Press. “We were up against 17 candidates, but the people were behind us. We will sleep soundly tonight.”
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