Kabul, September 13: The allegations in Afghanistan’s post-election fray come thick and fast: intimidation, ballot box stuffing, suspiciously high turnout, incredible numbers of votes for one candidate at polling stations.
Contenders hoping to unseat President Hamid Karzai are crying foul but in a nation where democracy is only five years old, decisions are traditionally made collectively and only 30 percent of people can read, fraud is never clear cut.
“What is fraud where we come from is not fraud here,” said one Western official who asked not to be named.
Afghans have lived through civil war and have been governed by an absolute monarch, a Soviet-backed communist regime and religious Taliban extremists — but only have experience of one democratically-elected leader, Karzai.
With ballots in from most of the polling stations in August elections, Karzai looks set to win a second term — with 54.3 percent of the count so far — but it could be weeks before claims of electoral fraud are resolved.
Nader Nadery of the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, said fledgling democracy must not be used to excuse fraud and urged thorough audits into all allegations, even if it means dragging the process out still further.
“It does make it complicated but we should not make that an excuse — because there is illiteracy, because there is less knowledge about democracy, then we should ignore it,” he told AFP.
Most Afghans live in rigid hierarchical societies in rural areas, loyal first to their ethnic group then to their local tribe, where elders have immense power to guide the decisions — and votes — of the people they are responsible for.
In the village of Hashim in eastern Paktya province, labourer Jawar Khan said that ahead of the elections, calls were made over the loudspeakers at the mosque urging people to vote for Karzai.
“The votes in our village were more than 20,000, I think out of them only 300 would be cast for others,” he said.
“I think no one has a problem giving their vote to Karzai. We have tribal agreement — when tribal elders request anything we cannot avoid it.”
Ahead of the elections, Karzai deftly plotted on Afghanistan’s political and ethnic chessboard, wooing influential kingmakers across the country and thus securing the votes of their flocks.
The ECC has ordered the audit and recount at polling stations where more than 95 percent of ballots were cast for one candidate.
Nadery said that block votes instructed by a tribal leader could account for some of those cases and would not therefore be fraudulent, but added that each claim must be investigated as ballot-stuffing or intimidation could be to blame.
“It is a violation of the process if one can find that there was pressure exerted by the elders,” he said.
The threat of Taliban attacks is also believed to have kept turnout to just 30-35 percent, creating more complexities.
Haji Sarwar of Wasi Mohammad village in Ghazni province, said people in his village had gathered early to vote but warnings that militants were approaching sent them fleeing.
“The voters all escaped and the ballot boxes were also taken to a safe place in a mosque. The people in the village decided that two elders take all the votes of people and cast them into the ballot boxes,” he told AFP.
Further compounding the problem is the woeful education in the fifth poorest country in the world. Two-thirds of people would not be able to read the names on the ballot paper. Among women, illiteracy soars to more than 85 percent.
Gulu Jan, from Langar Khail village of Ajristan district in Ghazni province, said elders had decided who people should vote for in both the presidential and provincial council elections and cast votes for them.
“They helped us and spared all the women the trouble of going and voting,” he said. “It is difficult to vote. The women and most of the men are not literate, and they cannot vote.”
The key, election observers say, is finding out where the fraud was on a large scale, intentional and could therefore affect the outcome of the vote.
“It is the second cycle of elections in Afghanistan,” said UN spokesman Adrian Edwards.
“Typically if you look at any country, the second cycle is the most problematic. We are still dealing with those problems. The bodies set up for this have a great deal of work to do.”
–Agencies