Saturday, November 21, 2009 Previous editions
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
AFGHANISTAN’S election commission proclaimed President Hamid Karzai the victor of the country’s tumultuous ballot yesterday, cancelling a planned runoff and ending a political crisis two-and-a-half months after a fraud-marred first round.
The Obama administration — which has been waiting for a government deemed legitimate to emerge in Kabul before announcing whether to deploy tens of thousands more troops — quickly commended the ruling.
"We congratulate President Karzai on his victory in this historic election and look forward to working with him" to support reform and improve security, the US Embassy said in a statement. Britain and the UN also issued statements of congratulations.
The cancellation of Saturday’s vote came one day after former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah announced he was pulling out of the November 7 vote. Abdullah said the ballot would not have been fair and accused the Karzai-appointed Independent Election Commission of bias.
The annulment is a huge relief to organisers who were scrambling to hold the election before the onset of Afghanistan’s harsh winter, as well as to authorities who feared a wave of bloody violence on polling day after a Taliban spokesman threatened attacks against anyone who took part.
Election commission chairman Azizullah Lodin announced Karzai the winner during a news conference in Kabul: "His excellency Hamid Karzai, who has won the majority of votes in the first round and is the only candidate for the second round, is declared by the Independent Election Commission as the elected president of Afghanistan."
Lodin said the commission had the authority to make the decision because the Afghan constitution only allows for a runoff between two candidates. There is a chance that the ruling could be contested, but the international community came out strongly in support of it.
The US statement said the commission’s decision was in line with "its mandate under Afghan law".
A spokesman for Abdullah, however, said the decision did not reflect Afghan law but declined to say if he would challenge it.
"The announcement that was made by the electoral commission today will not solve the problems of Afghanistan, and it doesn’t have any basis in law," Fazel Sancharaki said.
He said Abdullah would give his reaction in a speech today. "We expected that this commission would announce something like this because this commission has never been independent and has always supported President Karzai," Sancharaki said.
Karzai has led Afghanistan since US forces invaded to oust the Taliban in 2001. He won elections in 2004 and his latest victory will give him another five-year mandate.
The US will have to find a way to work with the Afghan leader, who has fallen out of favour in Washington after openly criticising US military tactics, including heavy air power that has killed many civilians.
The mass ballot-box stuffing that characterised the August 20 vote further sullied Karzai’s reputation. Fraud investigators threw out nearly a third of Karzai’s votes, dropping him below the 50% threshold needed to win outright.
Worried that Karzai’s government would not be seen as legitimate, a bevy of international figures, including US Sen John Kerry, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, pressed Karzai to consent to a runoff.
But yesterday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, in Kabul on a surprise visit, welcomed the decision to forego the runoff.
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