Ashraf Ghani soon re-elected? According to the first results announced on Sunday December 22, the outgoing president would have won an absolute majority in the presidential election which took place on September 28 in Afghanistan. His main opponent, chief executive Abdullah Abdullah, has announced his intention to contest the result.
The head of state won 50.64% of the vote, against 39.52% for Abdullah Abdullah, according to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC). The final results will be announced once any complaints lodged by the candidates have been dealt with.
As soon as the IEC was announced, the office of Abdullah Abdullah, in a statement, announced that it would oppose the re-election of his rival.
"We would like to make it clear once again to our people, our supporters, the electoral commission and our international allies that our team will not accept the result of this fraudulent vote if our legitimate demands are not heeded" , says this text.
Delayed and disputed results
The announcement of the preliminary results, initially scheduled for October 19 and then November 14, had been postponed each time for technical reasons. Abdullah Abdullah had called for a halt to the counting of votes to "save the fraudsters' process", without however substantiating his accusations.
His camp, judging that some 300,000 ballots validated by the IEC are problematic, had interrupted the counting process in seven provinces, before allowing it to resume in mid-December.
"We have done our duty with honesty, loyalty, responsibility and loyalty," said IEC president Hawa Alam Nuristani at a press conference. "We respected each vote because we wanted democracy to last," she added.
"These results are preliminary," insisted the American ambassador in Kabul, John Bass. "There are many steps left before the final results are certified, to ensure that Afghans have confidence" in the electoral process, he tweeted again.
The UN Mission in Afghanistan (Manua) welcomed the announcement of the results in a press release, while calling on candidates to "express their concerns (...) in accordance with the legal framework and procedures".
"Now, all the Afghan authorities and actors must demonstrate their commitment to safeguard and carry out the election, and to protect the integrity of the last stage of the process," said Tadamichi Yamamoto, the head of Manua. .
A scenario similar to 2014?
Both the Afghan population and the international community fear a repetition of the 2014 scenario, when Abdullah Abdullah had disputed the results of the election, marred by serious irregularities, which had led to a constitutional crisis. After Washington's intervention, he was ultimately assigned a position as chief executive, reporting to Ashraf Ghani.
This year, therefore, the election was to be the cleanest ever held in the young Afghan democracy, a German company that provided biometric machines to keep people from voting more than once. The ballot was thus held under conditions of transparency emphasized by observers. And none of those dispatched by candidates to polling stations reported serious irregularities on polling day, unlike the 2014 election.
But almost a million of the 2.8 million votes originally recorded were rejected for irregularities. With 1.8 million votes remaining, for 9.6 million registered voters, this election already had the lowest voter turnout of all the Afghan elections.
With AFP
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