Observers See Fraud Flourish Before Afghan Vote(And Accept It)

[tekisui]

Source: SFGate

(08-14) 04:00 PDT Kabul - -- Voting observers expect fraud during next week's Afghan presidential election and warn that cheating will most likely take place at polling stations in remote or dangerous areas where independent monitors won't be able to be present.

A suspiciously high number of women - far more than men - have been registered to vote in culturally conservative provinces where President Hamid Karzai expects to do well, a leading election monitor said this week. An adviser to the top U.S. commander said the black market for voter registration cards is flourishing and that she could have personally bought 1,000.

Monitors said they would tolerate a limited amount of fraud in the Aug. 20 balloting.

"If the level of corruption or violation is under 10 percent, it will be acceptable for me," said Jandad Spinghar, the executive director of the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, the country's top independent election monitoring group.

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[tekisui]

1. Karzai rival gains poll momentum

One of the leading candidates in Afghanistan's forthcoming election has cemented his place as the main challenger to President Hamid Karzai, raising the prospect of a runoff.

Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister in Karzai's government, has said on the campaign trail that his "focus is on how to prevent rigging from now until the election date".

The comments come just days after a survey suggested Karzai, the frontrunner, would fail to win an outright majority in the August 20 vote.

Abdullah said in an interview that Karzai's "failure" had led to the "disappointment of the people as well as us who supported him".

"The fact that he has turned a golden opportunity into a disaster situation, doesn't leave any place for him in our minds or in the minds of the people of Afghanistan," he said.

Security concerns

Karzai has opened up a big lead as the frontrunner, but if he fails to win an outright majority he would have to go for a runoff in six weeks against Abdullah.

A new survey published on Friday found Karzai had a commanding lead over his rival candidates, but it also showed that Abdullah had dramatically narrowed the gap.

The poll, conducted by the US-funded International Republican Institute in June, showed Karzai winning 44 per cent of the vote, an increase of 13 percentage points compared to a poll conducted in May.

But nearly 26 per cent of the 2,400 people surveyed for the poll said they planned to vote for Abdullah, up from seven per cent in May.

Abdullah, whose campaign momentum has surprised Western diplomats, held a rally in Kandahar on Wednesday - rare in the violent south - and flew on Thursday to the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif for another gathering.

The government had said it would not be able to guarantee his security.

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