Kabul: President Hamid Karzai and top challenger Abdullah Abdullah both have roughly 40 percent of the nationwide vote for president with 10 percent of polling stations counted, the Afghan election commission said Tuesday.
If neither Karzai nor Abdullah gets more than 50 percent of the vote, the two will face each other in a run-off, likely in early October. The Independent Election Commission plans to release more results over the coming days, but final certified results of last week`s election won`t be ready until at least mid-September.
Low voter turnout and allegations of fraud have cast a pall over the election. Abdullah has accused Karzai of widespread rigging, including ballot-stuffing and voter intimidation, while Karzai`s camp has leveled similar accusations. Both campaigns have denied the claims.
The Independent Election Commission announced that Karzai has 40.6 percent and Abdullah has 38.7 percent of the votes in the country`s first official returns since millions of Afghans voted for president last Thursday.
But the returns come from only 22 of the country`s 34 provinces and represent votes from just 10 percent of the country`s polling stations. Of the roughly 525,000 valid votes counted so far, the majority came from Kabul, Parwan, Nangarhar, Kunduz, Jowzjan and Ghor provinces.
Less than 2 percent of Kandahar votes have been counted, and no votes in Helmand have been tallied, the commission said. Karzai would expect to do well in both provinces, suggesting his returns could go higher.
Allegations of vote rigging continued to be leveled Tuesday. Abdullah for the first time showed marked ballots, pictures and video of what he called fraud, while six presidential candidates, including one being floated as a potential "chief executive" for the next government, warned that fraud allegations threaten to undermine the election and could stoke violence.
Abdullah showed reporters a packet of ballots with an official stamp on the back — which would allow the ballots to be cast — all marked for Karzai. He also showed video of what he said were Karzai supporters in Ghazni province marking dozens of ballots for Karzai, and a picture of a polling site in the south showing people he said were Karzai campaign officials looking over the shoulders of voters.
"If the widespread rigging is ignored this is the type of regime that will be imposed upon Afghanistan for the next five years and with that sort of a system, a system that has destroyed every institution, broken every law," Abdullah said at a news conference just before the results were announced.
With allegations of fraud becoming commonplace, some observers worry that supporters of Abdullah could vent fury if he comes in second with no chance at a runoff.
The six presidential candidates — none of them Abdullah or Karzai — said in a statement that dozens of complaints filed could affect the outcome of the election "to the point that many are seriously questioning the legitimacy and credibility of the results."
"Fraud in the elections could result in increased tension and violence," the six said. They said "their questions must be answered" by the election commission and international observers.
The signatories were all long-shot candidates. The most prominent is Ashraf Ghani, a Western-educated former finance minister who has been suggested as a "chief executive" under the next president tasked with handling day-to-day management of the government.
The country`s current finance minister claimed at a private dinner Monday that Karzai won with close to 70 percent of the vote — a statement dismissed by Abdullah`s campaign. Abdullah has said he is in the lead according to his campaign`s preliminary results.
The fraud claims threaten to undermine President Barack Obama`s Afghanistan strategy. The Obama administration hopes the election will produce a leader with a strong mandate to confront the growing Taliban insurgency.
As of Monday evening, the independent Electoral Complaints Commission said it received more than 50 allegations of fraud that could affect the election results if true. Final results cannot be certified as legitimate until the complaints commission rules on these cases.
Ghani earlier sent out a statement listing the complaints his campaign has submitted, including gunmen telling voters to cast ballots for Abdullah and officials stuffing ballot boxes in favor of Karzai.
Humayun Hamidzada, a spokesman for Karzai, said the government had the resources to respond to any violence that results from election announcements.
"If there are some people who try to violate the situation, I should say that today Afghanistan has its own security institutions, today Afghanistan has a constitution and has its own rules and law," he told reporters at a briefing in the capital, Kabul. "If anyone tries to break the law, they will face the legal process."
In the latest violence, a bomb blast killed four US troops in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, said military spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker. No other information was released pending the notification of family members.
The deaths bring to 41 the number of US troops killed in Afghanistan this month, the second deadliest month in the country since the 2001 US invasion. Last month a record 44 US troops died.
This year has been the deadliest of the war for US troops. Including the latest deaths, at least 172 American forces have died in the Afghan war this year, according to a news agency count.
The US has more than 60,000 troops in the country, many of whom helped secure last week`s nationwide election.
Bureau Report
