KABUL, 28 October 2005 — A key opposition leader yesterday demanded a recount of Afghanistan’s elections last month, saying widespread fraud undermined the legitimacy of the country’s first parliamentary vote in more than 30 years.
Yunus Qanooni, the chief rival to President Hamid Karzai in last year’s presidential ballot, said that if all the votes cast on Sept. 18 could not be recounted, a partial recount could save the process.
“We propose three ways: One, we want a recount of the vote,” the influential politician told reporters. “The second proposal is to recount ballots in those provinces where the fraud was widespread and candidates have complained.”
The third option would be to recount the votes of a sample of the leading candidates and “those declared losers” to see if the tally had been accurate, he said. “This would help to secure the legitimacy of the elections,” he said.
There have been several protests across the country about the vote-count, with some candidates alleging fraud. The provisional results of the election are expected to be confirmed by the end of the month once complaints against them have been addressed.
The Joint Election Management Body, a UN and Afghan body that organized the polls, has said many of the complaints were from losing candidates and could not be substantiated.
It had expected several complaints as the more than 5,700 candidates realized they were not going to win any of the nearly 670 parliamentary and provincial council seats up for grabs. The body has excluded 700 polling stations, more than 2.5 percent of the total, from the count because of alleged fraud, including ballot stuffing.
Qanooni heads the main alliance against Karzai’s government, a coalition of small parties and former warlords called the Afghanistan National Understanding Council. Sixteen people aligned to the coalition stood for parliamentary seats in Kabul province but only three, including Qanooni and frontrunner Haji Mohammad Mohaqeq, have secured places, according to provisional results.
Afghanistan, meanwhile, will soon put on trial 14 members of the fundamentalist Taleban who became the first insurgents loyal to the ousted movement to be extradited from Pakistan, officials said yesterday.
The men were being held by the National Security Directorate in Kabul, presidential spokesman Khaleeq Ahmad. Pictures showed some of them arriving in the city on Wednesday blindfolded and handcuffed.
“They will be put on trial... Soon, in the coming days, weeks,” Ahmad said. One of the men is Abdul Latif Hakimi, a spokesman for the Taleban who was arrested in Pakistan this month. He frequently called the media to say the Taleban were responsible for attacks on Afghan and US-led forces and civilians.
