AMID the ongoing election deadlock in Afghanistan, which has aggravated the political crisis in the militancy-plagued country, US Secretary of State John Kerry made an unannounced visit to Kabul on Friday ostensibly to help find an amicable solution to the standoff.

According to observers, Kerry had played a crucial role in settling the 2009 Afghan presidential election deadlock by convincing Abdullah to withdraw from going into runoff, allowing Karzai to become president.

Nonetheless, the US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, James Dobbins, has reportedly proposed the formation of a coalition government as an option to resolve the standoff. But both Abdullah and Ghani Ahmadzai have already rebuffed the idea of coalition administration.

A statement issued Thursday by the Presidential Palace here also said that the UN secretary-general’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Jan Kubis, in a meeting held in Presidential Palace, has suggested an investigation of some 8,000 polling sites with a total of 3.5 million votes, saying he would present the plan to the election commission. Afghanistan’s presidential election was held on April 5 where eight politicians contested the race leaving two frontrunners — Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai — to go for the runoff. In the preliminary results of the June 14 presidential runoff announced by the election commission last Monday, Abdullah Abdullah garnered 43.56 percent of more than 8 million votes while his rival Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai secured 56.44 percent.

However, Abdullah, who bagged 45 percent of some seven million votes in the April 5 presidential elections, as against 31.6 percent by Ghani Ahmadzai, has accused the election commission of siding with Ghani Ahmadzai, saying any decision of the election body is unacceptable unless the clean votes are filtered from the fake ones, a claim rejected by the election commission as baseless allegation. Abdullah has also alleged that the triumvirate consisting of the Presidential Palace, election commission and his rival Ghani Ahmadzai had committed widespread fraud during balloting.

Abdullah has also threatened to establish his own parallel government if his demands are not met. Afghan observers have described the current situation as “delicate,” saying that a spark is enough to plunge the country back into turmoil. Another analyst and lawmaker Mohammad Abdo has also expressed concern over the election deadlock, saying that the standoff, if it continues, could bring back the country into the abyss.

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Courtesy: Xinhua