Word: karzai
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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...
...video, allegedly shot in Ghazni province, 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...
...most Pashtuns, there is only one acceptable outcome. Gholam Mohammad, 24, a taxi driver in the capital who voted for Karzai, says Afghanistan's leaders have historically been Pashtuns like him, a tradition that should never change. Still, he approves of Karzai's choices of Mohammad Fahim, a Tajik, and Karim Khalili, a Hazara, as his two Vice Presidents, a choice he thinks will help ensure some cohesion among the different groups around the country. And what if Karzai somehow lost and a non-Pashtun took his place? "It would not be good," says Mohammad...
...standard in the Pashtun-dominated south. "The Pashtun people are the owners of this country, no one else," says Abdul Khan, 63, a tribal elder from Kandahar city. Another local Pashtun man said he would rather vote for a Hindu before Abdullah, a fellow Muslim. A second vote for Karzai would suffice, if the Taliban threats and voting controversy...