Kuwait Times

Published Date: September 08, 2009
By Jean Mackenzie

I know there was no fraud in Nad Ali," said Hajji Dastagir, a local candidate in the district of restive Helmand province said of the vote. "No ballot boxes were stuffed at the polling centers." How could there be. "The boxes were already full when the election workers brought them in," Dastagir said. In the days after the Aug. 20 election, it has become clear that the process was badly flawed. Allegations of widespread fraud continue to pour into the Electoral Complaints Commission, which has so far rece
ived more than 2,500 official complaints.

With about half the votes counted, President Hamid Karzai had about 46 percent of the vote, with his nearest competitor, Abdullah Abdullah, at 33 percent. If neither candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote, a runoff will be held sometime in early October. While election experts were hopeful that a second round might give the poll a greater semblance of legitimacy, other observers worry that, given Afghanistan's increasingly precarious security situation, a runoff might become a flashpoint for p
opular discontent.

The vote-counting process is going so slowly, and the number of major complaints that must be investigated are so numerous, that few believe the Independent Election Commission will be able to declare the final results by the Sept 17 deadline. In the interim, the two frontrunners are engaged in a war of words. Abdullah complains that his victory is being systematically stolen; Karzai insists that he is the legitimate choice of the Afghan people.

Supporters of both men have stated publicly that they will not accept defeat, reviving fears that the elections could lead to more violence. Meanwhile, reports of massive fraud like those emerging from Helmand province mean that the victory is sure to be tainted for whoever is the eventual winner. Observers say few residents in that violence-racked province dared to venture out to the polls on election say. Some estimates put voter turnout for the province as low as 5 percent.

Nonetheless, hundreds of thousands of ballots have been flowing from Helmand province to Kabul to be counted. "From morning until evening on election day, only 47 votes were cast in our entire polling center," said Muzhtaba, who worked in a polling site in the Chanjir area of Nad Ali district in Helmand. "But when the boxes were opened, each contained several hundred ballots. All of the boxes were stuffed by the heads of polling stations." He shook his head in disgust.

I am sorry that I participated in this process," he said. Abdullah Ahad Helmandwal, head of the Nad Ali council, insisted that the vote had been transparent. "Nobody can prove that even one vote was faked," he said. But witnesses tell a different story. "I was checking in voters in one of the sites in Nad Ali," said Muzamel Shukri. "A local commander brought me forms full of hundreds of voter registration card numbers.

I refused to give him the ballots, but then the head of the site came to me, very frightened, and said, 'Do whatever he says.'" In Nawa district, which had been the scene of a major offensive against the Taliban just days before the election, the situation was much the same. Helmand governor Gulab Mangal visited Nawa on Election Day, accompanied by a group of journalists. One election worker, who did not want to be named, said that only 240 voters had turned up at the Nawa high school, the district's main
polling center. "But all the ballot boxes are full," he said.

Engineer Abdul Hadi, who heads Helmand's election commission, rejects any allegations that his staff was involved in falsifying the vote. "There was so little fraud it cannot even be measured," he said. "If anyone says anything different, let them prove it. Otherwise, it's a lie and we do not accept it." Such comments prompted one local resident, who asked that his name not be used, to laugh out loud. "What elections?" he asked. "There was just the mafia there. Everybody was stuffing ballot boxes, and all
the votes went to one man: Mr President." - MCT