KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s elections were never going to be perfect; this is, as we were constantly reminded, not Switzerland.
Still, describing the process that began with a massively fraudulent vote on Aug. 20 and ended with the cancellation of a runoff election on Monday as “messy” would appear to be the height of understatement on President Obama’s part.
But in declaring that President Hamid Karzai had been re-elected to another five-year term, the Independent Election Commission hardly issues a ringing endorsement of the democratic process.
“In order to prevent unnecessary circumstances that we have seen in the past, to save money from the huge expense 1/8of an election3/8 and consistent with the highest interests of the Afghan people ... we declare that Hamid Karzai, who won the most votes in the first round of the elections and is the only candidate for the second round, be declared the elected president of Afghanistan,” said commission chief Azizullah Lodin.
Karzai’s victory had never been in serious doubt. What sealed the deal with the withdrawal of his last remaining challenger.
In announcing his withdrawal, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, who had finished second in the first round of voting, publicly castigated Karzai for his weak and corrupt administration over the past eight years. He cited the massive fraud that had taken place in the first round of elections in August, and complained that almost nothing had been done to prevent a repeat performance.
“For the sake of the transparency of the process in the second round of elections, and in order to regain the trust of the people, I suggested some conditions,” Abudllah said. “Unfortunately, those conditions were rejected out of hand.” Among other things, Abdullah had demanded that the head of the election commission be removed, accusing him of favoring Karzai and working for his victory.
The only reason for the runoff had been to erase, or at least lessen, the stigma created by the first round in which some 1.3 million votes had to be nullified due to what the United Nations-backed Electoral Complaints Commission called “clear and convincing evidence” of fraud.
Karzai, who had claimed a first-round win with nearly 55 percent of the vote, fiercely resisted a run-off until he finally succumbed to pressure from the international community in general and the United States in particular.
But Karzai quickly became an ardent supporter of the runoff, declaring on CNN that not conducting the vote would be “insulting democracy.” Abdullah, on the other hand, dropped out of the runoff he had fervently sought once it became clear that the vote, hastily scheduled for Nov. 7, was likely to be as flawed as the first election.
For a while, it appeared that the election would proceed as scheduled, even after Abdullah had withdrawn from the contest.
Happily, for the Afghan people at least, cooler heads eventually prevailed. Given the high cost of conducting the second vote, not to mention the Taliban’s threat to disrupt the proceedings, the election commission cancelled the election and declared Karzai the victor.
Email Story
Printer Friendly 
Quick Job Search
@Nyx.replyAnswerText@