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April 21, 2014
Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah speaks during an interview in Kabul yesterday. Reuters pic, April 21, 2014.Former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah is well ahead of his main rival in Afghanistan's presidential election, officials said yesterday after half of the ballots were counted, though a run-off vote still looks likely next month.
The Independent Election Commission (IEC) announced that Abdullah was in the lead with 44.4% followed by former World Bank economist Ashraf Ghani with 33.2% of the votes counted so far from the April 5 election.
If no candidate gains more than 50%, a second-round election between the two leading names is tentatively scheduled for May 28.
Hundreds of serious fraud allegations are being investigated after the eight-candidate election to succeed Hamid Karzai, who has ruled Afghanistan since the Islamist Taliban regime was ousted in 2001.
"We knew and believed in ourselves that we would be leading other candidates by a huge margin," Abdullah said after the partial results gave him an 11 percentage-point lead, adding that his campaign had concerns about cheating.
"We have filed our complaints with the Election Complaints Commission," he said. "We want to assure the people of Afghanistan we will defend and protect their votes."
The 2009 election, when Karzai retained power, was marred by massive fraud in a chaotic process that shook confidence in the multinational effort to develop Afghanistan and also started a sharp decline in relations with the US.
Ghani on Saturday also pointed to alleged fraud, in one sign that the final result could be disputed.
"There is still vagueness, and the point is that these votes are still changing," he said after the latest batch of results. "Fraud is not allowed in law at all, and it is not acceptable."
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