Kabul, September 10: Presidential contender Abdullah Abdullah has called for annulment of the Afghan poll results, saying the nation will not accept a future it has not chosen.
While the Afghan Electoral Commission gives incumbent President Hamid Karzai a clear lead, his main rival, Abdullah, has cited widespread fraud in the elections.
“Ballot box stuffing took place in hundreds, thousands of places,” he said in a phone interview with FRANCE 24, claiming there may have been more than one million fraudulent votes.
“The results don’t mean anything,” said the one-time foreign minister, who claims the Afghan electoral authority has announced results even for those polling stations which failed to open on the election day.
“The people of Afghanistan will not accept not being able to decide the future of this country,” he said, demanding the issue of fraud must be cleared up, taken care of, and corrected for the future of the country.
Data released by Afghanistan’s election commission gives Hamid Karzai an outright win in the presidential election in the first round if preliminary results are allowed to stand.
But the UN-commissioned Election Complaints Commission (ECC) said on Tuesday it had found ‘clear and convincing evidence of fraud’ and has ordered a partial recount.
With more than 91 percent of polling stations counted, Karzai has secured 54.6 percent of the votes which grants him a sweeping victory in a single round, even if 400,000 of his ballots were excluded because of fraud.
The remaining votes, mainly from the country’s south, including Karzai’s birthplace, are not expected to change the results but to extend his lead.
This is while the ECC’s findings of fraud are not on a big enough scale to push Karzai back below the 50 percent threshold to force a second round, and thus the commission is most likely to declare Karzai the winner.
However, Abdullah has pledged to abide by the EEC’s decision, and said he was urging his supporters to be patient, respect the law and avoid violence.
—–Agencies