Pakistan Rupee Exchange Rate
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Election posters for the incumbent, President Hamid Karzai, on a street in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Wednesday.
Their assertion was a more serious indictment of the election’s already-marred integrity than that of other foreign monitors and only deepened the political crisis here. President Karzai’s campaign office angrily dismissed the E.U. assertion, which came as the latest preliminary tally of votes showed he had won — if the suspected ballots are included.
Mr. Karzai, who is vying for a second five-year term, won 54.6 percent of the vote, enough to avoid a runoff election, according to the tally released by the country’s independent election commission. His closest challenger, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, won 27.8 percent.
But the election was tainted by blatant evidence ofballot-box-stuffing and other frauds, and the country’s United Nations-backed Electoral Complaints Commission has ordered recounts and forensic examinations of ballot boxes in 10 percent of polling stations — involving at least 15 percent, and possibly a far higher proportion, of reported votes. The complaints commission, headed by a Canadian, is the ultimate arbiter of election results.
Some western officials say that if all fraudulent ballots were discarded, Mr. Karzai’s tally would drop below 50 percent, forcing him into a runoff against Mr. Abdullah. But it is unclear how many ballots might be ruled invalid in the recount, and even if Mr. Karzai were ultimately forced into a runoff, the harsh winter weather may prevent a second election from being held until April.
The fraud and the risk that it could leave the country with a government widely seen by Afghans and the international community as illegitimate, has left Afghanistan’s western backers in a growing quandary: Whether to more aggressively pressure Mr. Karzai’s government and his loyalists at the election commission to work harder to prevent fraud, or to be more conciliatory and accept his reelection as a fait accompli.
There are growing fears among United States and European officials that the fraud and a drawn-out recount or runoff risks derailing American and NATO efforts to stabilize the country, by hurting the government’s already low credibility among Afghans and weakening support for troop increases in western countries where polls already show growing disillusionment with the conflict.
The war’s sinking popularity follows the deadliest stretch the United States and NATO forces have seen during the eight-year-old conflict. Three American soldiers were killed Tuesday in southern Afghanistan by a roadside bomb, a United States military spokesperson said. At least 344 western military fatalities have been recorded so far this year, a 17 percent increase over last year’s entire death toll, according to icasualties.org, which tracks fatalities.
Now, the evidence of widespread electoral fraud has further dimmed support for the war.
In a news conference just hours before the completed preliminary results were released, the European Union monitors said they believed the tally included 1.5 million suspicious ballots, or more than one out of every four votes cast.
Dimitra Ioannou, one of the E.U. election monitors, said 1.1 million suspicious votes belong to Mr. Karzai and 300,000 belong to Mr. Abdullah. E.U. officials emphasized that those numbers do not necessarily represent fraudulent votes, but votes that need to be investigated.
In response, Mr. Karzai’s campaign lashed out against the E.U. announcement as “partial and irresponsible,” setting the Afghan leader against representatives of countries his government depends on for military and financial support against a raging insurgency that controls much of the countryside. A spokesman for Mr. Karzai’s presidential office declined to comment on the campaign office’s statement.
But Mr. Abdullah’s campaign, which has maintained that more than one million votes are fraudulent, strongly backed the E.U. monitors’ announcement.
“Their job is to observe the election process and announce what they have seen,” said Fazal Sancharaki, a spokesman for Dr. Abdullah. “This is their authority and responsibility.”
According to the election commission, the Aug. 20 vote saw just 38.17 percent turnout, and about three out of five voters were men.
Mr. Karzai received 3,093,256 votes; Mr. Abdullah 1,571,581 votes; and the third-place finisher, Ramazan Bashardost, 520,627 votes. The total number of valid votes so far is 5,662,758, the commission said. Link...