Word: abdullah
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...second installment of results, announced on Wednesday, President Hamid Karzai extended his lead over his top challenger, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah. After a dead heat the first day, he now stands at nearly 45% of the vote vs. 35% for Abdullah. Eager as Afghans and media outlets are for fresh information, the figures still reflect only 17% of the more than 27,000 polling sites nationwide. Moreover, they were drawn from less than half of the country's 34 provinces. As a result, even as some observers posit a Karzai victory, it's still hard to gauge where...
Returns will continue to be announced piecemeal in the coming days. Based on the recent pattern, so too will accusations of foul play. Abdullah, who leveled charges of systematic fraud and other irregularities at Karzai supporters the day after the vote, has since escalated his case. At a Tuesday press conference in the courtyard of his Kabul residence, he showed videos and materials that he said proved that Karzai tried to "steal the verdict of the nation...
...showed a man stuffing a ballot box. Another featured a child at a table marking ballots for the same candidate. Additional footage appeared to show Karzai campaign officials looking over the shoulders of voters as well as a polling station that apparently remained open two days after election day. Abdullah warned that if such evidence is ignored, "this is the type of regime that will be imposed on Afghanistan for the next five years. With that sort of system - with a system which has destroyed every institution, broken every law - Afghanistan cannot succeed...
...Karzai camp has issued similar charges, even as the President's campaign manager dismisses the charges by rivals: "If you are in second place, you say anything." However, Abdullah's claims received a shot in the arm on Aug. 25 from six other presidential hopefuls, including former Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani, who alleged that widespread fraud took place on election day, largely to the President's advantage. At least 1,461 complaints have already been lodged with the Electoral Complaints Commission, more than 150 of which involve large numbers of votes and could affect the final outcome. The commission...
...officials, meanwhile, say they are working to avoid the prospect of post-election unrest. Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, has met with Abdullah and Karzai to insist they refrain from claiming victory until results are complete. Yet the longer the process drags on and the barbs fly, analysts say, the greater the space for troublemaking. "It is dangerous for each side to keep supporters [charged up] for the future," says Nasrullah Stanikzai, a politics professor at Kabul University. (Read how a contested election result in Afghanistan may help...