HAMID KARZAI, the master dealmaker of Afghan politics, appears to be facing a far tighter re-election battle than would have seemed possible just a few months ago, when he was widely tipped for victory.
After preliminary results showed him virtually neck-and- neck with his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, the focus will now turn to the allegations that Mr Karzai’s supporters have orchestrated a systematic campaign to influence the finely-balanced vote in the incumbent’s favour.
Initial returns gave Mr Karzai 40.6 per cent of the vote, while Mr Abdullah, a former foreign minister, won 38.7, with 10 per cent of the votes counted.
The limited size of the sample means there is still every possibility of large swings in favour of either contender. Yet the chance that Afghanistan could go to a run-off in October is likely to lend a much sharper edge to an exercise that Afghans sometimes assume is a pre-arranged charade organised by western powers.
Barack Obama and his Nato allies in Afghanistan are counting on a successful poll to create the political backdrop that will help them recover ground lost against the Taliban. A run-off would raise the risk of a repeat – perhaps better rehearsed – of the scores of Taliban attacks that prevented many Afghans from voting in the poll on Thursday.
The car bombings yesterday in the southern city of Kandahar were a stark reminder of the fragile security situation.
Five car bombs destroyed a construction company office and damaged dozens of nearby buildings, officials said. At least 40 people died in the blast.
Supporters in Washington and Europe who backed Mr Karzai’s ascent to power after the Taliban rulers were ousted in 2001 have grown impatient with his inability to deliver improved governance.
The possibility that Mr Karzai might lose the election will, however, add a new layer of uncertainty to an already rapidly deteriorating military situation.
At the same time, a run-off might go some way to convincing sceptics that the election is a genuine competition where individuals’ votes count.
The biggest uncertainty surrounds returns from the south, where Taliban fighters have inflicted a sharply mounting toll of dead and wounded on Nato forces.
Mr Karzai hopes to garner votes from members of his Pashtun community who occupy a belt straddling Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, where the insurgency is at its most intense.
So far, the region is a kind of electoral “black hole”. Observers were barely able to venture into the south owing to the danger of Taliban attack. No votes have yet been counted from Helmand province, for example. Only a fraction of the tally has been counted in Kandahar.
Opposition candidates in the presidential poll, and in a parallel vote to elect provincial councils, accuse the government of taking advantage of the vacuum to stuff ballots in favour of Mr Karzai, with the complicity of electoral officials. Mr Abdullah has revealed what he says is video evidence of Karzai supporters fabricating votes.
Assadullah Nasar, a lawyer who ran for a seat in the provincial council in the southern Zabul province, believes the ballot was a sham. He said electoral officials had tallied 600 ballots in the Zanjer area, when only 50 had been counted. “I don’t know if this is an election or a kind of game,” he said.
Candidates such as Mr Nasar must make formal filings – backed up by evidence – to an Electoral Complaints Commission set up to investigate fraud. As of yesterday, the organisation said it had received 790 accusations of abuses, of which more than 50 were deemed serious enough to have a potential bearing on the result.
The question now is whether officials will be able to withstand the intense political pressure from politicians of many stripes to either investigate – or protect – the cheats. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009