President Hamid Karzai has been officially declared Afghanistan's first-ever popularly elected president after a weeks-long fraud probe found no reason to overturn his landslide victory.
While the US-backed leader made an immediate call for unity, his closest rivals refused to concede, undermining hopes for political stability in a country racked by ethnic mistrust.
The UN-sponsored electoral board, confirming the results of the Oct. 9 vote, said Karzai had won a five-year term with 55.4 percent, 39 percentage points more than his nearest rival. It was the first national ballot since the fall of the Taliban three years ago.
"His excellency Hamid Karzai is the winner," board chairman Zakim Shah said at a ceremony on Wednesday broadcast live on Afghan state television. "We are announcing the first elected president of Afghanistan."
In Washington overnight, US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: "We congratulate President Hamid Karzai on his election as Afghanistan's first democratically elected president and we look forward to his inauguration next month."
The UK, Germany and France also wished Karzai well.
High turnout and the lack of major violence on polling day "demonstrates the scale of the transformation that has already taken place in Afghanistan in the three years since the overthrow of the Taliban," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said.
NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who bulked up the alliance's Afghan security force during the poll, said he looked forward to working with Karzai "in helping Afghanistan build a better, safer future."
The election itself was delayed from June because of insecurity and logistical problems. The result was then held up by weeks of mudslinging by Karzai's challengers, who threatened to boycott the outcome.
In its final report released on Wednesday, the panel confirmed problems with ballot stuffing and with ink used to mark people's fingers to prevent multiple voting.
But it said there was "no evidence" that the problems were widespread or that they favored only Karzai.
"There were shortcomings," Staffan Darnolf, a Swedish election expert on the panel, said at a news conference. "But they could not have materially affected the overall result."
Karzai was expected to make a victory speech in the Afghan capital yesterday.
However, his nearest rival, former Education Minister Yunus Qanooni, refused to concede defeat, raising the risk of political instability in a country slowly emerging from a quarter-century of war.
Qanooni's running mate Syed Hussein Alemi Balkhi said the report was "unacceptable" though he stopped short of saying they would reject the result.
Qanooni won 16.3 percent of the vote, ahead of Hazara chieftain Mohammed Mohaqeq with 11.7 percent.
Mohaqeq, who has vowed "never" to recognize Karzai's victory, declined to comment on Wednesday.
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
PAPAL RETORT: Pope Leo told reporters that he has ‘no fear, neither of the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel’ US President Donald Trump has feuded with Pope Leo XIV over the Iran conflict — setting off an unholy row that could have serious political implications for the Republican leader back in the US. Trump has drawn barbs even from some allies over the attacks on the US-born pontiff, who has criticized the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown, the intervention in Venezuela and the Iran war. The president risks alienating the religious right in November’s crucial US midterm elections. So far the unprecedented clash between the leader of the most powerful military on Earth and the head of the world’s 1.4 billion
A 16-year-old boy has been charged with murder and aggravated sexual abuse in Florida in the death of his 18-year-old stepsister on a Carnival Cruise ship, the US Department of Justice said on Monday. Timothy Hudson was initially charged in February and subsequently indicted on March 10, but the breadth of the case was not known until a seal was lifted on Friday last week, weeks after US District Judge Beth Bloom in Miami said that he would be prosecuted as an adult at the request of the government. Anna Kepner had been traveling on the Carnival Horizon ship in November last
RSS