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Fraud claims mar Karzai poll 'win'

Sep 09 2009

Fraud claims mar Karzai poll 'win'

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By Agencies

The Electoral Complaints Commission has ordered a recount of votes from several polling stations [AFP]
Incumbent Hamid Karzai appears to have won Afghanistan's presidential elections, with nearly all the votes counted, but a UN-backed commission says it has "clear and convincing evidence of fraud".

The Independent Election Commission (IEC) said on Tuesday that with 91.6 per cent of polling stations tallied, Karzai had 54.1 per cent of the vote, more than the 50 per cent needed to avoid a second round run-off.

Karzai's nearest rival, Abdullah Abdullah, won 28.3 per cent of the vote, the IEC said.

But the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) said earlier on Tuesday that it had found evidence of fraud in the election and ordered a partial recount of the vote.

Fraud allegations

The commission said it would set aside results from 600 polling stations where it suspected irregularities.

Owing to mounting allegations of fraud, the IEC has excluded around 200,000 votes from 447 polling stations from preliminary results to be announced later this week, Daoud Ali Najafi, IEC chief electoral officer, told German Press Agency dpa.

The votes were suspicious and were sent to the ECC for adjudication, Najafi said, adding: "The ECC will decide if they would throw it out of the final result."

The ECC also ordered the IEC to recount votes from polling stations where more than 600 votes were cast - the most that could be cast at a single station.

The August 20 election was Afghanistan's only second direct presidential election, and has been overshadowed by claims of massive fraud.

Full result

The US, which has troops stationed across the country as part of its effort to defeat fighters allied to Taliban and al-Qaeda, said that the full result of the Afghan election could take weeks or months to emerge.

"It is very important that these elections are seen as legitimate in the eyes of the Afghan people, in the eyes of the international community. And I am not going to prejudge where this whole thing comes out," Ian Kelly, a spokesman for the US state department, said on Tuesday.

"It is not going to be a matter of days or weeks, it could be a matter of months to sort out all of these allegations."