Afghanistan, Karzai, and run-off elections
Karzai
You will likely see headlines on newspapers, TV, and the internet talking about the canceled run-off election in Afghanistan in the next couple days. Before you get blindsided by someone asking your opinion on Karzai, you need to know the basic situation at hand. The first round of voting for the Afghan president back in August was riddled with fraud. Rumors of ballot stuffing, voter intimidation, and fraud by the Independent Election Commission itself plagued the election and caused plenty of tension among the five main candidates.
“‘I was a witness to fraud, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it,’ said a female election monitor at a voting site in Barga village, in this province, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. She said her fellow staff members voted at least 100 times for Abdullah and forced other residents to make the same choice.”1
Abdullah Abdullah
Much of the fraud was also directed at Hamid Karzai,2 the current President of Afghanistan and winner of 50% of the votes in the August election. With the two main candidates facing fraud-related protests after the August election, only Karzai and his main rival Dr. Abdullah Abdullah stayed in the race for what was to be a run-off election this week. Karzai actually wanted the run-off election to occur so that he could add some legitimacy to his presidency and squash any thoughts that his reign was forced upon his people. Over the weekend, however, Abdullah Abdullah dropped out, still worried about the credibility of the voting process. Irony? Perhaps.
As a result, Karzai is the default President of Afghanistan, but he will be face plenty of backlash from his own people, the U.S., and his neighboring countries.
Read on:
Reuters.com – Karzai declared Afghan president, run-off scrapped
- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/27/AR2009082704199.html?sid=ST2009082704222 ↩
- Karzai was accused of similar ballot stuffing methods, among other more intimidating methods of fraudulent voting practices. ↩
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