Main contenders in Afghan polls claim victory

KABUL — The votes have been counted in Afghanistan’s presidential and provincial council election, and the nation is holding its collective breath waiting for results.

Meantime, no small measure of political hot air is being expended trying to spin results, manage expectations and set the stage for the next act in what has been a dramatic yet drawn-out poll. 

While preliminary results will not be announced for several days, President Hamid Karzai’s camp has already declared that he expects a first-round win. From what little data is available, it appears the incumbent does have a comfortable lead.

His main rival, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, has also claimed victory – but, just in case, his spokesman Sayed Agha Hussain Fazel Sancharaki has already complained of widespread fraud in favor of the president.

Maverick reformer Ramazan Bashardost has made a surprisingly strong showing in the few stations whose results have so far been reported: his populist campaign, conducted from his headquarters in a tent, with just a rickety truck for transportation, seems to have touched a nerve in a population impatient with the current state of affairs.

It is to be hoped that it was Bashardost’s railing against corruption, rather than his fairly wild threats to invade Iran in order to “liberate” the ancient city of Isfahan, that has captured the popular imagination.

Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, at one time hailed as the kingmaker whose swing vote could make or break the leading candidates, is running a distant fourth. He has little at stake, which makes his harsh critique of the elections all the more damning.

“The fifth most corrupt government in the world has shown that in its relentless desire for power it would hold no law sacred and violate all legal and constitutional norms,” he said, in a statement released to the media on election day. "Bribery and use of government resources to secure the election of the incumbent has been the norm."

Despite the general braggadocio, there is little that is yet certain in the elections. The counting process is long and cumbersome, and the results will have to be vetted by the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) before a final determination is made.

Votes were counted, by hand, in local polling stations overnight Thursday; the results have been posted at individual sites, and an official tabulation sent in a sealed, tamper-proof envelope to a provincial data collection center.

From there province-wide results will be collated and sent on to Kabul, where the Independent Election Commission (IEC) can make a preliminary announcement.

In the meantime, the Complaints Commission will sift through hundreds of allegations of irregularities and fraud, and give their assessment to the IEC. Only then can certified results be released — most likely on or about September 17.

The big question now is whether there will be a second round of elections. According to the Constitution, if no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote, the two top vote-getters will face each other in a runoff.

Early results are far from conclusive; in Kabul, Karzai and Abdullah seem to be running neck and neck in the few centers whose results have been collected by the media. But the numbers are too small to make any hasty judgments: According to Pajhwok, an Afghan news agency, Karzai received 652 votes to Abdullah’s 580 in one neighborhood station, with Bashardost receiving 138 and Ashraf Ghani 117. 

In five polling centers on Balkh, in northern Afghanistan, Karzai is ahead, but far from the 50 percent plus one he will need to avoid a runoff. According to a local reporter, out of 6,776 votes, Karzai received 2,509; Bashardost a surprising second with 2,282, Abdullah third with 1,905, and Ashraf Ghani a distant fourth with just eight votes.

In one major polling center in Herat, Karzai was again ahead with 848 votes; Bashardost second with 418; Abdullah third with 369.

The wild card will be the south, where the security situation is such that few observers were able to monitor the vote or the count.

The Independent Election Commission has announced that overall turnout was between 40 and 50 percent — far lower than the 70 percent recorded in the first presidential elections in 2004, but suspiciously high given the largely empty polling stations observed by multiple media throughout the country.

For the next two weeks, purported results, wild accusations and threats of violence will doubtless plague Afghanistan’s political scene. The overall situation will be complicated by the fact that Ramazan, a holy month of fasting, begins on Saturday. Life normally slows down during Ramazan – but for Afghanistan, this year, it will be just the opposite.

President Barack Obama has already hailed the elections as a success, and U.N. Special Representative Kai Eide has distributed praise for a vote that was less violent than expected. 

At least 26 people died in over 100 separate attacks on election day; most major cities were rocketed multiple times, armed clashed broke out in at least a dozen sites, and voter turnout, especially in the south, was minimal due to Taliban patrols along major roads.

Eric Bjornlund, co-founder and principal of U.S.-based Democracy International, was much more cautious in his assessment of the vote. “Perhaps these elections will have been successful if they have contributed to the long-term development of organizations, institutions, and democratic processes in Afghanistan. It will be some time before we can judge whether that has really happened,” he said in a statement released to the media.