Afghan Elections: Karzai To Win, But Legitimacy In Question

Today, Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission announced the full preliminary results of the presidential election. Hamid Karzai won 54.6 percent of the vote while his main opponent Abdullah Abdullah ended up with 27.8 percent. However, claims of massive fraud and vote-rigging have prompted a partial recount, which will delay a final official result for weeks.

The Independent Election Commission also said that the turnout in the controversial election was just 38.7 percent. This very low figure, added to the evidence of fraud, raises some serious questions about the credibility of the electoral process, and about the legitimacy of the outcome.

Despite the news from the IEC, a victory celebration would be premature for Hamid Karzai and his campaign team. Today, an EU vote monitor said that as many as 1.5 million ballots could have been fraudulent from a total number of voters of almost 6 million. According to the EU electoral mission in Afghanistan, out of the 1.5 million votes they identified as suspicious 1.1 million went to Karzai and only 300,000 for Abdullah Abdullah.

Karzai’s campaign team was quick to react to the EU monitoring commission accusations, and called the EU announcement “irresponsible”.

“Hamid Karzai’s election campaign team believes today’s announcement of the number of suspected votes by the head of the EU election monitoring commission is partial, irresponsible, and in contradiction with Afghanistan’s constitution,” said Karzai’s campaign in a statement to the press.

If a recount is ordered by the IEC, under the pressure of the EU monitoring commission, and Karzai has less than the required 50 percent of the votes, there would be a runoff poll against Abdullah Abdullah.

As the EU commission is obviously pushing for a complete recount of the ballots, as they should considering that 25 percent of the ballots could be fraudulent, the Obama administration has been remarkably silent in regard to the post election situation. As Washington is gearing up for an escalation of the conflict by sending  more troops to Afghanistan, it seems that the Obama administration has resigned itself in dealing with a Karzai re-election, as opposed to a lingering  political vacuum in Afghanistan, which would make any attempt of nation building completely impossible.