Kabul:
Although the preliminary results of the Sept. 18 parliamentary elections, expected to be announced Sunday, were postponed, interviews with Afghan and Western officials indicate that fraud was pervasive and that nearly 25 percent of the votes are likely to be thrown out.
The fraud, which included ballot-box stuffing, citizens forced to cast their votes at gunpoint, corrupt election officials and security forces complicit with corrupt candidates, is expected to mean that 800,000 to a million votes will be nullified, according to two Western officials who are following the election closely.
The Afghan Independent Election Commission, which oversees the counting, has refused to disclose the number of votes that could be thrown out, but said in a statement that it had decided to nullify wholly or partially the votes cast at 430 polling places, and that votes at another 830 sites were being audited, suggesting substantial problems.
Until now the commission has been praised for endeavoring to run an honest vote-counting process, but the delay at the last minute, as hundreds of candidates have thronged to the capital, Kabul, clamoring to know the results, has raised questions.
In an e-mailed statement released just two hours before a planned news conference to announce the results, the commission said it would make the announcement on Wednesday. "The reason for the delay in results is to be more accurate and precise," the announcement said.
People close to the commission said that at least 89 percent of the votes had been counted and sifted for fraud in all provinces, but that in the majority, a few votes remained to be counted and commission members wanted to wait until the count was complete.
Afghan and Western observers said, however, that they were worried that the commission was coming under enormous political pressure to change the outcome, especially for a handful of powerful figures.
"You can do a lot of mischief in three days," said a Western observer knowledgeable about the election process.
The commission worked intensively through the weekend and until 4 a.m. Sunday to reach the almost complete results, according to an election commission official, a statement that indicated that, up until the last minute, the commission planned to make the announcement on Sunday.
At stake is the makeup of the Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of the Afghan Parliament and the only body with the power to question the policies of President Hamid Karzai. The lower house must approve his ministers and pass and reject laws proposed by the president and his ministers, and may demand explanations of government policies.
Although Mr. Karzai and his inner circle backed a number of candidates, it is so far unclear whether they did well enough to guarantee him the 130 seats he sought -- enough to be sure of a majority on important issues. The main opposition to the president, Abdullah Abdullah's Coalition for Hope and Change, is watching the moves of Mr. Karzai's candidates closely to be sure they do not displace any of the coalition's candidates. One of the movement's organizers, Ahmad Wali Massoud, said that, barring last minute politicking, his group is all but certain to have 88 seats, enough to wield considerable political power. Mr. Abdullah was the main election challenger to Mr. Karzai in 2009.
Whether this election turns out to be another embarrassment for the country because of the rampant fraud, as last year's was, rests on the shoulders of the Independent Election Commission, which is responsible for holding the election and counting the votes, and the Electoral Complaints Commission, which handles accusations against individual candidates.
Last year the former commission was accused of bias toward President Karzai and either overlooking or assisting in the widespread fraud. It was the complaint commission that restored a modicum of integrity by ultimately throwing out more than a million votes in last year's presidential election. This year, Mr. Karzai is perceived to have weakened the complaint commission by changing its structure so that a majority of members were Afghans rather than international representatives.
It is hard to tell if, in fact, the commission is weaker, since it is still at an early stage of its work. The complaint commission must adjudicate all challenges.
The Independent Election Commission, which had been viewed as complicit in the fraud that marred the presidential election, gained a new identity this year under a new commissioner, Fazal Ahmad Manawi, and a new chief electoral officer, Abdullah Ahmadzai, both appointed last spring by Mr. Karzai. While many people had been dubious about them, the two men worked to make the commission's fraud detection stronger, to fire lower-level officials who presided over fraud last year and to make the commission more transparent.
Mr. Manawi, an ethnic Tajik, is a native of mountainous Panshir Province who trained as a mullah and a judge and hides his political acumen beneath a disarmingly disheveled appearance and suits that always look a little too large. Although he acknowledges privately to friends that he has the ambition to be the chief justice of the Supreme Court or the attorney general, he has also said that if he loses his integrity, he loses his biggest asset, and at only 42 years old, he is not in a hurry to be rewarded with a high position.
Mr. Ahmadzai, a member of the Kuchi tribe, is a former Asia Foundation official who is widely perceived as a technocrat. He is a tall, quiet man with a reputation as a scrupulous election officer, impervious to pressure. People who know him say that he will have no qualms about resigning if he thinks the process is less than proper.
However, nothing in their past could have prepared the two men for the level of pressure they now face from hundreds of candidates angry about the apparent outcome. A total of 2,500 candidates vied for 249 seats.
Since the election on Sept. 18, Mr. Manawi has returned to his office each day at dusk from the tally center, where the votes are counted, to find candidates crowding his waiting room for an audience to request that he change the votes in their favor, he said. At night when he goes home, more come knocking on his door. A devout Muslim, he said he can no longer go to mosque to pray even on Fridays because he is accosted by people.
"We live in the same neighborhood, so some candidates come to me and ask me to take them to his house so they can ask him for help," said Maulawi Enyatullah Baligh, a friend of Mr. Manawi and a lecturer in theology at Kabul University. "But his answer was always clear: 'I can't add one vote to your box and I can't take one vote out of your opponent's box.' "
Mr. Massoud, the opposition organizer who also counts himself as a friend of Mr. Manawi, added that he was hoping that Mr. Manawi would be able to withstand the pressure.
"He wants to somehow prove himself, prove that he is loyal to his job, to the people, and wants to be as honest as possible, but there is the infrastructure of the whole government around him, so one doesn't know how much he can resist, how much he can do," Mr. Massoud said. "We can't say quite yet."
The fraud, which included ballot-box stuffing, citizens forced to cast their votes at gunpoint, corrupt election officials and security forces complicit with corrupt candidates, is expected to mean that 800,000 to a million votes will be nullified, according to two Western officials who are following the election closely.
The Afghan Independent Election Commission, which oversees the counting, has refused to disclose the number of votes that could be thrown out, but said in a statement that it had decided to nullify wholly or partially the votes cast at 430 polling places, and that votes at another 830 sites were being audited, suggesting substantial problems.
Until now the commission has been praised for endeavoring to run an honest vote-counting process, but the delay at the last minute, as hundreds of candidates have thronged to the capital, Kabul, clamoring to know the results, has raised questions.
In an e-mailed statement released just two hours before a planned news conference to announce the results, the commission said it would make the announcement on Wednesday. "The reason for the delay in results is to be more accurate and precise," the announcement said.
People close to the commission said that at least 89 percent of the votes had been counted and sifted for fraud in all provinces, but that in the majority, a few votes remained to be counted and commission members wanted to wait until the count was complete.
Afghan and Western observers said, however, that they were worried that the commission was coming under enormous political pressure to change the outcome, especially for a handful of powerful figures.
"You can do a lot of mischief in three days," said a Western observer knowledgeable about the election process.
The commission worked intensively through the weekend and until 4 a.m. Sunday to reach the almost complete results, according to an election commission official, a statement that indicated that, up until the last minute, the commission planned to make the announcement on Sunday.
At stake is the makeup of the Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of the Afghan Parliament and the only body with the power to question the policies of President Hamid Karzai. The lower house must approve his ministers and pass and reject laws proposed by the president and his ministers, and may demand explanations of government policies.
Although Mr. Karzai and his inner circle backed a number of candidates, it is so far unclear whether they did well enough to guarantee him the 130 seats he sought -- enough to be sure of a majority on important issues. The main opposition to the president, Abdullah Abdullah's Coalition for Hope and Change, is watching the moves of Mr. Karzai's candidates closely to be sure they do not displace any of the coalition's candidates. One of the movement's organizers, Ahmad Wali Massoud, said that, barring last minute politicking, his group is all but certain to have 88 seats, enough to wield considerable political power. Mr. Abdullah was the main election challenger to Mr. Karzai in 2009.
Whether this election turns out to be another embarrassment for the country because of the rampant fraud, as last year's was, rests on the shoulders of the Independent Election Commission, which is responsible for holding the election and counting the votes, and the Electoral Complaints Commission, which handles accusations against individual candidates.
Last year the former commission was accused of bias toward President Karzai and either overlooking or assisting in the widespread fraud. It was the complaint commission that restored a modicum of integrity by ultimately throwing out more than a million votes in last year's presidential election. This year, Mr. Karzai is perceived to have weakened the complaint commission by changing its structure so that a majority of members were Afghans rather than international representatives.
It is hard to tell if, in fact, the commission is weaker, since it is still at an early stage of its work. The complaint commission must adjudicate all challenges.
The Independent Election Commission, which had been viewed as complicit in the fraud that marred the presidential election, gained a new identity this year under a new commissioner, Fazal Ahmad Manawi, and a new chief electoral officer, Abdullah Ahmadzai, both appointed last spring by Mr. Karzai. While many people had been dubious about them, the two men worked to make the commission's fraud detection stronger, to fire lower-level officials who presided over fraud last year and to make the commission more transparent.
Mr. Manawi, an ethnic Tajik, is a native of mountainous Panshir Province who trained as a mullah and a judge and hides his political acumen beneath a disarmingly disheveled appearance and suits that always look a little too large. Although he acknowledges privately to friends that he has the ambition to be the chief justice of the Supreme Court or the attorney general, he has also said that if he loses his integrity, he loses his biggest asset, and at only 42 years old, he is not in a hurry to be rewarded with a high position.
Mr. Ahmadzai, a member of the Kuchi tribe, is a former Asia Foundation official who is widely perceived as a technocrat. He is a tall, quiet man with a reputation as a scrupulous election officer, impervious to pressure. People who know him say that he will have no qualms about resigning if he thinks the process is less than proper.
However, nothing in their past could have prepared the two men for the level of pressure they now face from hundreds of candidates angry about the apparent outcome. A total of 2,500 candidates vied for 249 seats.
Since the election on Sept. 18, Mr. Manawi has returned to his office each day at dusk from the tally center, where the votes are counted, to find candidates crowding his waiting room for an audience to request that he change the votes in their favor, he said. At night when he goes home, more come knocking on his door. A devout Muslim, he said he can no longer go to mosque to pray even on Fridays because he is accosted by people.
"We live in the same neighborhood, so some candidates come to me and ask me to take them to his house so they can ask him for help," said Maulawi Enyatullah Baligh, a friend of Mr. Manawi and a lecturer in theology at Kabul University. "But his answer was always clear: 'I can't add one vote to your box and I can't take one vote out of your opponent's box.' "
Mr. Massoud, the opposition organizer who also counts himself as a friend of Mr. Manawi, added that he was hoping that Mr. Manawi would be able to withstand the pressure.
"He wants to somehow prove himself, prove that he is loyal to his job, to the people, and wants to be as honest as possible, but there is the infrastructure of the whole government around him, so one doesn't know how much he can resist, how much he can do," Mr. Massoud said. "We can't say quite yet."
Track Latest News Live on NDTV.com and get news updates from India and around the world
