Early results put interim leader Hamid Karzai far ahead of his chief rivals in Afghanistan's landmark presidential election yesterday as the vote count was suspended for a day for the beginning of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
Of 25,671 valid votes counted in five provinces, the US-backed incumbent won 15,098, or 59 percent of the total, according to the official election Web site.
Former Education Minister Yunus Qanooni, who was expected to be Karzai's closest challenger, was running at 17 percent, ahead of ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum with 13 percent.
The tally represented only a tiny fraction of the estimated 8 million votes. Counting only began Thursday after five days of delays as a panel of foreign experts probed allegations of electoral fraud.
Karzai, who has led Afghanistan since the ouster of the Taliban regime by US-led forces in late 2001, is widely expected win the vote and become Afghanistan's first popularly chosen president after a quarter-century of conflict.
Final results are due at the end of October, although it should be clear who has won after about a week.
Afghans turned out in force for the election, despite threats of attacks by Taliban rebels that largely failed to materialize.
Reginald Austin, the top adviser to the Joint Electoral Management Body, or JEMB, said that according to an early estimate, voter turnout was between 75 percent and 80 percent.
Some 95 percent of ballot boxes have now been transported from thousands of polling stations across the rugged country to eight counting centers.
Yesterday, two NATO transport planes left Kabul to collect more ballots from neighboring Pakistan and Iran, where about 850,000 Afghan refugees also voted.
But the 1,000 Afghan counting staff were given yesterday off to celebrate the start of Ramadan, the Islamic fasting month. Counting was to resume Saturday.
With the formation of the three-member panel to investigate the fraud allegations, most of Karzai's 15 challengers have stepped back from a boycott they announced on polling day Oct. 9 after complaints surfaced that indelible ink used at some polling stations to stop multiple voting could be washed off voters' hands.
Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, the stepsister of teenage diarist Anne Frank and a tireless educator about the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She was 96. The Anne Frank Trust UK, of which Schloss was honorary president, said she died on Saturday in London, where she lived. Britain’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have known Schloss, who cofounded the charitable trust to help young people challenge prejudice. “The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
Cambodia’s government on Wednesday said that it had arrested and extradited to China a tycoon who has been accused of running a huge online scam operation. The Cambodian Ministry of the Interior said that Prince Holding Group chairman Chen Zhi (陳志) and two other Chinese citizens were arrested and extradited on Tuesday at the request of Chinese authorities. Chen formerly had dual nationality, but his Cambodian citizenship was revoked last month, the ministry said. US prosecutors in October last year brought conspiracy charges against Chen, alleging that he had been the mastermind behind a multinational cyberfraud network, used his other businesses to launder
Uncontrolled fires burned through bushland in the Australian state of Victoria yesterday, forcing communities to evacuate and authorities to warn of a “catastrophic” fire danger rating for today. Amid temperatures that exceeded 40°C in parts of the state, two large bushfires were raging near the towns of Longwood and Walwa. The fires had destroyed at least two structures and were expected to continue to spread today as heat and wind pick up, authorities said. The Longwood fire had grown to more than 25,000 hectares in size, while the Walwa fire was 10,000 hectares and has created its own weather system, with a pyrocumulonimbus
RSS