As Afghans await the results of a bitterly contested election, their country is caught in a complex guessing game about the identity of the next president and how solid his mandate will be.
The gap between the main rivals in the race for the top job — President Hamid Karzai and former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah — appears to be widening in the incumbent’s favor.
Just over 17 percent, or nearly one million ballots, have been counted and made public, showing Karzai with 42.3 percent so far, and Abdullah on 33.1 percent.
The Independent Election Commission (IEC), which is in charge of the count, said yesterday it would not be releasing any more figures before tomorrow.
Counting continued yesterday, said IEC spokeswoman Marzia Siddiqi, giving no reasons for the cancellation of yesterday’s release. Today is a holiday in Islamic Afghanistan.
While IEC officials have been eager to stress that nothing should be extrapolated from the figures released so far, they appear to suggest turnout was low — around 30 percent to 35 percent — raising questions about the legitimacy of the man declared president when final results are known next month.
Afghanistan’s second presidential election and a parallel vote for provincial councillors were held on Aug. 20 under the shadow of scores of Taliban attacks.
Just two hours after the first results were released on Tuesday, the city of Kandahar was rocked by a suicide car bomb that killed more than 40 people and bore all the hallmarks of a Taliban attack.
Views on the legitimacy of the vote are mixed, with some commentators insisting such low turnout raises serious questions about what mandate a president with 50 percent of around five million votes can claim.
Others are as adamant that turnout of around five million — of 17 million registered — is proof Afghans are engaged in the democratic process and sent a clear message to the Taliban that their intimidation tactics were futile.
“I think Afghans have shown very clearly to the Taliban that despite the fear that was created before the election — which was massive, with night letters, threats, attacks — despite all of that they wanted to vote,” said Nader Nadery, of the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan.
“Even in very volatile environments, where there was fighting — Baghlan, Logar, Paktia, Zabul, Helmand — when the fighting stopped people went to polling stations and asked to be able to vote,” Nadery said.
“Compare that response proportionately to the level of threat and fear from the Taliban, and the message to the Taliban is that your tactics haven’t worked,” he said.
In some areas of the country, however, the campaign of intimidation worked well enough to keep voters away almost entirely. In some militant strongholds, including Logar Province south of Kabul, residents said turnout was negligible.
“In my village there are more than 6,000 people. Only seven voted,” mechanic Mansour Stanikzai said in the provincial capital Pul-i-Alam.
Analyst Haroun Mir said the Taliban’s tactics successfully derailed the election and undermined the democratic process, which the international community has been eager to promote as suitable for the feudal, war-ravaged nation.
“The reason we had the election was to give legitimacy to the government, and we have failed in that goal,” Mir said.
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