Quick Declaration in Afghan Presidential Election Unlikely

Source: VOA

Hopes are fading in Afghanistan of quickly declaring last week's presidential election a success amid widespread fraud allegations. Additional, partial results from the on-going vote count are not due to be released until Saturday. Incumbent President Hamid Karzai, so far, has a modest lead over former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah.

Afghanistan's Election Complaints Commission, partly appointed by the United Nations, has received 1,500 formal complaints - and one out of every ten have been deemed serious enough to merit investigation. That is a process that could delay next month's timetable to certify the election results.

Meanwhile, the Independent Election Commission has fallen behind in releasing preliminary and partial results. Eight days after the election, votes from less than one-fifth of all polling stations have been made public.

Allegations of stuffing ballot boxes involving many hundreds of thousands of votes, amid a lower than expected voter turnout, have tarnished the image of the August 20 election.

In some districts, where Taliban insurgents are active, few people cast ballots due to concerns of violent retaliation against voters.

Marvin Weinbaum, a Middle East Institute scholar and former State Department intelligence analyst, told a Heritage Foundation forum in Washington Thursday a flawed election could "delegitimize" the Karzai administration.

"There's hard evidence now of large-scale ballot box stuffing, destruction of ballots, falsification of tallies. And I think that there's going to be much more evidence presented in the next few weeks," said Weinbaum.


more: http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-08-28-voa13.cfm