NEWS JUNKIE POST
Aug 23, 2009 at 11:52 amAfghan Elections:Abdullah Accuses Karzai Of Vote-Rigging
Abdullah Abdullah, the former foreign minister and main challenger of Hamid Karzai, reiterated today that he is ahead in the count and he claims that in some areas of low turnout, reported by some observers to be as low as 10 percent, the turnout was inflated by four times the real figure with all the votes for Karzai.
Abdullah said:”There are widespread irregularities, fraud and efforts for rigging. The people of Afghanistan deserve to know what is going on, and the international community deserves to know about our concerns.”
Abdullah brought up the allegations of rigging to the attention of Afghanistan’s independent Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC). The ECC chairman, Grant Kippen, says that so far he has received 225 complaints. The charges include; tampering with ballot boxes, voters intimidation, violence, people voting twice and interference in polling.
Kippen said:”Among the 225 complaints, 35 have been assigned a high priority, and these are ones that we had to deem to be material to the outcome of the election results.”
Despite the fact that the elections were hailed as a success in Washington & most of Europe, the record low turnout in the South and the new allegations of massive fraud made by Abdullah Abdullah against Hamid Karzai are making the Afghan elections loose a lot of credibility.
