Independent Election Commission announces election results, Karzai gets 54.6 per cent of votes while Dr. Abdullah secures 27.8 per cent, results not final until approved by UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission
  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Whatsapp
  • Linkedin
  • Print

    • The complete results of the August 20 presidential elections released by the Independent Election Commission (IEC) revealed that incumbent Hamid Karzai received 54.62 percent of the ballots cast, followed by Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, who secured 27.75 percent of the votes. Ramazan Bashardost was at third place with 9.2 percent while Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai could secure 2.74 percent of the votes1. These results are however not final until approved by the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC), which has called for a recount at about 10 per cent of the polling stations2.

    The EU Observer’s mission in a statement on September 16 stated that about 1.5 million votes cast mostly in favour of Mr. Karzai were suspicious which must be cross-checked for fraud. The IEC however termed the EU assessment as exaggerated3. Reports also indicated that the recount process was a huge task which could potentially take a few months4. The White House on its part urged that fraudulent votes should be thrown out5.

    Fourteen people were killed including six Italian soldiers and 59 others were injured in a powerful car suicide bombing in Kabul on September 17. In the aftermath of the incident, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi asserted that he was planning to bring home at least 500 of the country’s 3,000 troops deployed in Afghanistan within the “next few weeks6.”

    In other developments, the new head of the British Army, Gen. Sir David Richards stated that defeat for allied forces in Afghanistan would have an "intoxicating impact" on extremists around the world and that the failure of a coalition of such powerful Western nations would show to the terrorists that "anything might be possible7."

    Top