Warlords, Taliban set out on path to Afghan Parliament

KABUL—Eighty percent of the votes from Afghanistan’s elections have been counted, organisers said, with initial results showing key warlords and Taliban on track to win seats in the first parliament in more than 30 years. Votes for most areas were being audited and the Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) was on schedule to announce the final results before the end of the month, the group’s head Peter Erben told reporters.
“Eighty percent of our polling stations countrywide are now counted so we are well on track with regard to the timeline for the actual count,” he said. Initial results posted on the JEMB website show mujahedin commander Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq, accused of atrocities during Afghanistan’s civil war that ended in 1996, leading the race for a Kabul parliament seat after 20 percent of votes were counted. He is followed by Yunus Qanooni, who lost to Hamid Karzai in last year’s presidential election, and then former planning minister Bashar Dost and Abdurab Rasoul Sayaf, also accused of atrocities in the country’s troubled past. Mullah Abdul Salam Rocketi, a leading commander from the hardline Taliban regime which was ousted in a US-led campaign in late 2001, was topped the list for a parliament seat in southern Zabul province after about 40 percent of the votes were counted, according to the JEMB’s provisional results.
There had been no evidence of systematic fraud in the election, although some ballot boxes had been set aside for inspection after complaints of irregularities, Erben said. “For about four percent of the ballot boxes we are doing additional review to assure that no fraud took place,” he said. “To date the most common irregularities that we have detected have been localised incidents of ballots being stuffed into the box, then incidents of proxy voting (in which) someone has cast the vote for someone else. “Yet, as many observers have pointed out also, there are no signs of a central or countrywide orchestrated attempt to defraud the Afghan vote.”
Afghanistan’s election commission vowed strong action against vote fraud on Sunday after international observers highlighted “worrying” cases of cheating in last month’s landmark legislative elections. The U.N.-Afghan Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) says ballot boxes from about four percent of 26,000 polling stations are being checked for irregularities ranging from ballot stuffing and proxy voting.
But JEMB chairman Peter Erben said the cases of fraud were localised rather than on a orchestrated, countrywide, scale and would not affect the overall integrity of the September 18 polls. “If compared with other, similar, post-conflict elections I think that the level of irregularities that we are currently reviewing is extremely reasonable,” he told a news conference. “And I do not believe that these irregularities give any reason to doubt the integrity of the elected institutions.” Nevertheless, Erben said, fraud needed to be dealt with. “We must react against it and I believe you will see some strong decisions in coming days,” adding that suspect ballot boxes could be excluded in whole, or in part, and candidates linked to fraud could be warned, fined or disqualified.—Agencies