KABUL: Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai hopes to win another five years in office but will wait for the results of investigations into electoral fraud, his campaign spokesman said on Wednesday.

Karzai won 54.6 percent of the preliminary results released Wednesday from controversial elections. “It seems we have that with a clear margin of 4.6 percent and we hope we will win the election. “But obviously we respect the process and we know that these are not certified results. We will wait for the certified results and hopefully when the certified results are announced we will still be winning the elections,” spokesman Waheed Omer said.

The Independent Election Commission (IEC) released figures which put Karzai on track to win a second term with more than the necessary 50 percent plus one vote, a clear lead on nearest rival Abdullah Abdullah, who has 27.7 percent.

“Based on the preliminary results that we have announced today, Hamid Karzai is at the front of the queue,” IEC official Daud Ali Najafi told reporters.

“This is just the preliminary results, we will have final results when we investigate the (fraud) claims,” he said. It was “impossible” to announce Afghanistan’s new president on Thursday as originally scheduled, he added.

Turnout was 38.7 percent, he said. European Union election monitors said Wednesday that up to 1.5 million votes — one quarter of all ballots — had been manipulated or were suspected of having been tampered with.

Deputy mission head Dimitra Ioannou said 1.1 million of the suspect votes were in favor of incumbent President Hamid Karzai and 300,000 were cast for his main challenger, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah. “All of them need to be investigated,” she added.

The total number of ballots cast was 5,918,741 — 3,093,356 going to Karzai.

With EU observers calling for recounts at 2,500 polling stations, observers are urging candidates not to declare victory until all irregularities are resolved.

The chief observer of the EU monitoring mission, Philippe Morillon, reiterated that no official result should be declared until all irregularities are investigated and resolved.

“We will not make the choice of your next president but we refuse to be complicit in any attempt of massive fraud,” he added.