Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s chief political rival yesterday agreed to take part in the Nov. 7 runoff election, setting the stage for a high-stakes showdown in the face of Taliban threats and approaching winter snows.
Former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah made his comment to reporters one day after Karzai bowed to intense US and international pressure and accepted the findings of a UN-backed panel that there had been massive fraud on his behalf in the Aug. 20 vote.
Those findings showed Karzai failed to win the 50 percent required to avoid a runoff.
POLL RESULTS
The government-appointed Independent Election Commission (IEC) told a press conference yesterday that Karzai secured 49.67 percent of the vote, down from around 55 percent in preliminary results, while Abdullah secured 30.59 percent, up from the preliminary result of 28 percent.
The UN mission in Afghanistan, which provides assistance with election-related operations, said preparations were under way to block any risk of mass fraud.
Aleem Siddique, a spokesman for the UN mission, said 200 of 380 district election chiefs from the IEC were being replaced after the watchdog found evidence of widespread fraud and vote-fixing.
“More than half of the district field coordinators are being replaced to prevent any attempted fraud or because there have been complaints made against them by candidates and observers,” Siddique said.
Afghanistan now faces a logistical nightmare, having just over two weeks to prepare for a second round of voting as the harsh and fast-approaching Afghan winter, which makes much of the mountainous country inaccessible, closes in. The UN said distribution of ballots would begin today.
DIFFICULTIES
Finding replacements for election workers implicated in fraud will be difficult. The government had to scramble this summer to recruit enough election officials and poll workers, especially at voting stations for women. It’s unclear if they would be able to fill open posts with better-qualified people.
“It is hard to see how a second round can be credible unless women’s security and access to the polls is dramatically improved,” said Rachel Reid, a researcher with Human Rights Watch in Kabul.
Abdullah said US and Afghan forces also must provide security to prevent a repeat of a wave of Taliban attacks in August that killed dozens. In some areas, militants cut off the ink-marked fingers of people who had voted.
Voters “are taking a risk in some parts of the country and they should be confident that that risk is worthwhile,” said Abdullah, who said he called Karzai to thank him for agreeing to hold the second-round. “I would like to see that our people are participating without an environment and atmosphere of fear and intimidation.”
However, he conceded that conceded security was far from perfect.
“There are some circumstances that we cannot change in the coming 15 days, like areas which Taliban can threaten the people,” Abdullah said.
Abdullah’s declaration sets the stage for an election that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said would be a “huge challenge” to pull off without repeating the widespread fraud that marred the first-round balloting. The world body has set aside more than US$20 million to support the poll, Siddique said.
Finding replacements for election workers implicated in fraud will be difficult. The government had to scramble this summer to recruit enough election officials and poll workers, especially at voting stations for women. It’s unclear if they would be able to fill open posts with better-qualified people.
“It is hard to see how a second round can be credible unless women’s security and access to the polls is dramatically improved,” said Rachel Reid, a researcher with Human Rights Watch in Kabul.
The Independent Election Commission, the Afghan body that runs elections, must also finalize the list of polling stations. Much of the fraud in the August balloting came through ballots that arrived from so-called “ghost polling stations” that never opened because they were in dangerous areas.
But closing the questionable stations would prevent voters in those areas from casting ballots. Kai Eide, the U.N. chief in Afghanistan, has said he worked to open the stations to avoid disenfranchising voters.
Abdullah said Wednesday that he is preparing a list of conditions that his team wants election organizers to commit to in order to have a fair vote. He said he would be open to negotiating the conditions, but would not accept an election organized on the same terms as the August vote.
“I will be flexible, but I will be serious about this because, after all, it is the transparency and fairness of the elections which will decide the outcome,” he said.
Karzai’s capitulation Tuesday was a relief to the Obama administration, which hopes the troubled nation has taken one step closer toward a credible, legitimate government necessary to win public support in the U.S. for the war and reverse Taliban gains.
The U.S. military reported one of its troops was killed in a bomb attack in the south Tuesday, bringing the total number of Americans killed in October to 30.
Karzai announced the decision Tuesday after a day of intensive talks with U.S. Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Later, in a telephone interview from Dubai with The Associated Press, Kerry described the evolution in Karzai’s thinking.
“President Karzai really deeply believes he had won the election and ... that the international community was kind of conspiring to push for a different outcome,” Kerry said. “He had people within his government, people within the election commission who felt they were being insulted about putting together a faulty election process.” “There were a lot of very deep feelings about Afghanistan’s right to run its election, its competency in running it,” Kerry said.
__ Associated Press Writer Todd Pitman contributed to this report.
AP-TK-21-10-09 1150GMT
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
CHINA REACTS: The patrol and reconnaissance plane ‘transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,’ the 7th Fleet said, while Taipei said it saw nothing unusual The US 7th Fleet yesterday said that a US Navy P-8A Poseidon flew through the Taiwan Strait, a day after US and Chinese defense heads held their first talks since November 2022 in an effort to reduce regional tensions. The patrol and reconnaissance plane “transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,” the 7th Fleet said in a news release. “By operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law, the United States upholds the navigational rights and freedoms of all nations.” In a separate statement, the Ministry of National Defense said that it monitored nearby waters and airspace as the aircraft
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique