Early Afghan election results show Karzai lead
Updated
More results are expected soon in Afghanistan's presidential election, with the first of preliminary results reflecting 10 per cent of the votes counted and giving the incumbent president Hamid Karzai a narrow lead. Hamid Karzai has just over 40 per cent and his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah, is running a few per cent behind. But a candidate needs a 50 per cent majority to avoid a second-round run-off vote, and there have been many complaints of vote rigging, which could see a protracted legal struggle.
Presenter: Liam Cochrane
Speaker: Christine Fair, assistant professor, school of foreign service, Georgetown University, Washington D.C.
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FAIR: The incumbent actually had a pretty large advantage in terms of being able to manipulate the system to his advantage. So for example Karzai was in a position to appoint governors, those at the provincial district level, chiefs of police, and then there were these reports of militias that were raised by the centre. So countervailing those realities is the fact that in much of the south, which would be the presumed constituency for Karzai, the Taliban basically made a number of credible threats to keep people away from the polls. So again it's anyone's guess how this is going to pan out. I can tell you this much, I don't think that if Karzai were to come out with a majority that that would be viewed as credible given all of the massive allegations of rigging. And to be clear of course Abdullah is also, is accused of engaging in electoral irregularities himself.
COCHRANE: And how are they likely to match up in a second round run-off if it does get to that point?
FAIR: Well I don't know; first of all it's a very small fraction of the vote. Second there are widespread allegations of irregularity as well as quite frankly voter fraud. And so I'm not exactly, I don't feel terribly comfortable saying which way this is going to go. I do think that for the integrity of the presidency and to basically bolster the public confidence that this was not a stolen election, I think a run-off is probably the best thing for Afghanistan and the credibility of the presidency.
COCHRANE: So from your observations of the election last week the voter fraud and irregularities were such that they could actually swing the election result, is that what you're saying?
FAIR: Well look through large parts of the insurgent affected areas people essentially did not vote. Now there were various reports, and they're certainly unconfirmed but they were throughout the media, that the incumbent had made deals with various local Taliban commanders by which people would not vote but through which the Taliban would not stop filled ballot boxes from returning. So I mean a couple of things that we really need to look at, there was an excessive number of female registration in places where, let me just put it mildly, women aren't known to be liberated. So it's widely suspected that the female voting centres would be a place where you would see irregularity because you would expect very low female turnout, yet many women were registered. And I think everyone knows that voting registration cards were for sale by the mass in the open market. So we're really going to have to be looking very carefully at the returns coming from those areas which are known to be insecure, and really just trying to see if the - how shall I put this delicately - if the ballots returned in any way shape or form resemble the expected turnout. And remember while there were a number of election observers, election observers couldn't go in the places that were most dangerous and most vulnerable to electoral misconduct. So you don't have someone standing out at the polling centre tracking how many women are going in in a minute, and they said preliminary reports do suggest that there's been some really interesting activities involving women's votes and ballot boxes apparently being stuffed the night before the election.
