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Afghan election results grant Karzai a majority

Supporters of Afghan President Hamid Karzai appeared to have won a majority of seats in landmark elections for parliament's lower house, observers said yesterday, as provincial councils finalized their vote for representatives to the upper house.

Meanwhile, hundreds of losing parliamentary candidates and their supporters held a peaceful demonstration in Kabul and called the results of the country's Sept. 18 elections illegitimate and also accused the electoral commission of corruption.

The protests came a day after the Joint Electoral Management Body announced the final results of the country's first parliamentary and provincial elections in more than 30 years.

The developments bring Afghanistan closer to re-establishing its national governing assemblies after a quarter century of war. But new violence killing six police and two pro-government figures in the past two days underlines the threat of further instability.

Nearly all winning candidates in last month's elections ran as independents, making it difficult to determine where power will lie in the 249-seat legislature. But Karzai's fellow Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group, and others who support him dominate, Western diplomats and other political analysts said.

"The government has the support of more than 50 percent in the parliament," said Ali Amiri, a respected political observer and local author on Afghan affairs.

Joanna Nathan, senior Afghanistan analyst at the International Crisis Group, a research institute, said the largest bloc in the parliament consists of religious conservatives, "but these are people Karzai can deal with."

A Western diplomat in Kabul, speaking on condition of anonymity because she is not authorized to talk to the media, also confirmed that Karzai's supporters hold a slim majority, saying his rivals were splintered along factional lines and not a serious threat.

The polls were hailed as a success in the country's slow march toward democracy, although their legitimacy has been undermined by suspected ballot-box stuffing that led to the dismissal of 50 election workers, as well as alarm that more than half of the winners are former regional strongmen.
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