Complete List of Registered Presidential Tickets (Afghanistan)

[nrupatunga]

@datguy79 @MLRS

So with presidential elections this week, any clear frontrunner or will result in second round??

 

[datguy79]

@datguy79 @MLRS

So with presidential elections this week, any clear frontrunner or will result in second round??

Honestly, nobody knows. There is no frontrunner, it having turned into a three-way race. Barring any surprises (either Ghani or Rassoul turning to be a dud on election day) it will PROBABLY go to a second round. Here is a timeline, with the result not expected to be official till the 24th: Timeline

 

[MLRS]

@datguy79 @MLRS

So with presidential elections this week, any clear frontrunner or will result in second round??

Karzai has set everything up to ensure it benefits him.

On Saturday, Afghans will vote in a presidential election that Mr. Karzai has shaped at every stage. He narrowed the candidate field, dissuading potential candidates from entering the race and forcing his brother Qayum to leave it. He handpicked the officials who will preside over any election disputes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/04/w...nt-to-keep-his-sway-after-term-ends.html?_r=0

 

[ladder]

Reports coming in, turnout is high and can touch 70%.

Afghanistan election: Voters defy Taliban to cast votes for new president in historic poll

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...r-new-president-in-historic-poll-9240448.html

 

[ladder]

Over 950 polling stations in Afghanistan closed

Over 950 polling stations in Afghanistan closed

 

[ninja85]

what the hell we have to do it with afghan elections.

 

[ladder]

what the hell we have to do it with afghan elections.

Nothing, absolutely nothing! Now go back into your cave.

 

[ubuntu]

Nothing, absolutely nothing! Now go back into your cave.

 

[Sea Eagle]

Self Delete

 

[nrupatunga]

Afghanistan vote counting underway

While partial results could be released as early as Sunday, a more complete picture is not expected for at least a week. Preliminary results are due April 24. If no candidate wins more than half of the votes for president, a run-off election will be held at the end of May.

 

[nrupatunga]

Abdullah leads in first official results from Afghan vote

Initial election results put Afghan opposition figure Abdullah Abdullah in the lead on Sunday, but with less than 10 percent of votes counted and widespread allegations of fraud, there was no clear indication of who would succeed Hamid Karzai.

Results based on 10 percent of votes from 26 out of 34 provinces showed Abdullah with 41.9 percent and Western-leaning academic Ashraf Ghani second with 37.6 percent. A third candidate, Zalmay Rassoul, backed by two of Karzai's brothers, trailed far behind with 9.8 percent.

"I want to make clear that the results could change in future, as we announce the results with additional percentages of the vote, and this is not the final result," said Independent Election Commission (IEC) chairman Ahmad Yousuf Nuristani.

Afghanistan's allies praised the April 5 vote as a success because of a high turnout estimated at 60 percent of 12 million eligible voters and the failure of the Taliban to stage high-profile attacks.

But widespread fraud could undermine the legitimacy of an election meant to usher in Afghanistan's first democratic transfer of power, as Karzai steps down after more than 12 years in power and as Western forces prepare to leave.

If no candidate secures more than 50 percent of valid ballots, the top two will go into a run-off.

Abdullah has said he had already discussed joining forces with other candidates for a run-off, including Rassoul.

"Our program will be to form an inclusive government ... We should use any capacity that exists in this country," Abdullah told Reuters on Sunday.

"So we are in contact not with just one candidate, but also other candidates and politicians in the country."

Ghani said it was far too early to talk about a victory for his rival as the partial results were not significant.

"We are in a 100-minute game and we have only done 10 minutes ... the result will change," he said.

COMPLAINTS RISE

The Independent Election Complaints Commission (IECC) has recorded 870 "Priority A" complaints - considered serious enough to affect the outcome of the election. That is more than the 815 recorded in 2009, although the increase could reflect a greater willingness or ability of observers and voters to complain.

Overall, the IECC received 3,724 complaints, up from 3,072 in 2009. That may rise as more complaints reported in the provinces reach Kabul.

"There is a possibility, in order to review the high number of complaints accurately, that we may expand the timeframe for reviewing complaints in provinces for some days," said IECC spokesman Nader Mohseni.

Final results are due on May 14.

Video clips of people stuffing ballot boxes are circulating on the Internet, but it unclear which candidate would have benefited most from such activity.

Urban participation in the election was unexpectedly high, but it is unclear to what extent rural voters were deterred by the Taliban and what role state officials, including police, had in encouraging people to back a particular candidate.

The United Nations, which administers the fund that is paying for the election commission and the complaints body, said it was still too early to call the election.

"Until the final results are announced by the IEC, stakeholders should be careful in drawing premature conclusions so as not to create inaccurate expectations," said U.N. special envoy Jan Kubis.

 

[nrupatunga]

@datguy79 @MLRS

So whats the latest on run-off?? When will it be held?? Will abdullah comfortably make it??

 

[datguy79]

@datguy79 @MLRS

So whats the latest on run-off?? When will it be held?? Will abdullah comfortably make it??

Lots of deal-making. Rassoul and Sherzai already joined the Abdullah camp. Ghani is getting paranoid, suddenly attacking Governer Noor of Balkh. The runoff is June 14th. I think Abdullah will win easily, given it is in the summer and the taliban offensive will be ongoing in the Pashtun areas.

 

[nrupatunga]

Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah survives bomb attack: BBC reports: The front-runner in Afghan's presidential election Abdullah Abdullah has survived a suicide bomb attack targeted at his convoy in Kabul.

Police say two civilians were killed and several injured when two blasts hit a rally. Abdullah says some of his bodyguards were among the injured.

 

[nrupatunga]

Afghan Candidate Alleges Voting Fraud by Karzai and Aides

Less than 48 hours after a runoff election to choose the next president of Afghanistan, the first signs of a looming political crisis emerged on Monday, with the campaign of Abdullah Abdullah claiming there had been widespread ballot stuffing and suggesting he was being set up for a defeat he would not accept.

A senior campaign official for Mr. Abdullah, who won the most votes in the election's first round, said the candidate believes President Hamid Karzai and a coterie of advisers around him orchestrated the fraud. The aim, in the estimation of the Abdullah campaign, was either to install Ashraf Ghani, the other candidate for president, or to see Mr. Karzai use a postelection crisis as an excuse to extend his own term in office.

Continue reading the main story
RELATED COVERAGE

Afghan women lined up to vote at a polling station in Herat on Saturday.Afghans, Looking Ahead to U.S. Withdrawal, Vote With Guarded OptimismJUNE 14, 2014
"Postelection, there is an opportunity. Whether they seize it or not, we cannot judge it at this stage,The Saturday Profile: Abdullah Abdullah Moves Toward Center of Afghan PowerJUNE 13, 2014
Ashraf Ghani at a campaign event in Jowzjan Province on June 2. The runoff vote for president will be held on Saturday.Technocrat to Afghan Populist, Ashraf Ghani Is TransformedJUNE 11, 2014
"Karzai is quite happy everything is tied up," said the official, who spoke anonymously because the campaign was still collecting evidence of fraud. "They have engineered it in a way that goes far beyond the normal. It's industrial-scale fraud."

The official, who is familiar with Mr. Abdullah's thinking, questioned the neutrality of electoral officials and the courts, saying the candidate had no expectation that complaints would be addressed. Campaign officials also accused Mr. Ghani of being complicit in fraud.

In his public statements, Mr. Abdullah has also suggested there was widespread fraud, though he has not leveled direct accusations at Mr. Karzai or other officials. Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Mr. Abdullah questioned initial reports that more than seven million Afghans had voted. (His campaign figures five million would have been more realistic.) He also said that his campaign staff had witnessed ballot stuffing in Kabul and elsewhere in favor of Mr. Ghani, and that some of the fraud was conducted by a senior elections officials.

Mr. Karzai's office scoffed at the accusations coming out of the Abdullah campaign. "The accusation is absolutely baseless and wrong," said Adela Raz, a spokeswoman for the president.

The campaign of Mr. Ghani, a former finance minister, said it would accept the official final result. But his campaign officials complained of fraud and violence on the part of Mr. Abdullah's supporters, and accused Mr. Abdullah himself of violating campaign laws and stoking a crisis.

"If Dr. Abdullah is not announced as unconditional winner, then the country might be led toward a crisis — that is what they have been saying," said Faizullah Zaki, a spokesman for Mr. Ghani, at a news conference on Monday. "We believe such statements are a serious violation of the Constitution, electoral laws and the fundamental rule of election."

The hard line from the Abdullah campaign, before all the ballots were even counted or any evidence of fraud publicly disclosed, propelled concerns that Afghanistan was headed for a political showdown at a crucial and delicate moment in a country with a history of civil strife.

The number of American-led troops here is shrinking fast, and foreign forces have already stepped back from a front-line role, leaving Afghanistan's improving but still unsteady security forces to take on the Taliban. At the same time, American and European officials have made an acceptably clean election here a prerequisite for the delivery of billions of dollars of annual aid to Afghanistan.

After years of watching corruption flourish and listening to Mr. Karzai berate the West for not bringing peace to Afghanistan, the country's leaders "haven't got that many shots left in the magazine, I'm afraid," said a Western diplomat ahead of the vote, which took place on Saturday.

"In terms of a stock of good will, the stock has been significantly diminished," the diplomat added.

For many in Afghanistan, the accusations of fraud directed at President Karzai's circle echoes the fraught 2009 election and political crisis, when Mr. Karzai defeated Mr. Abdullah. In that vote, about 1.2 million ballots were thrown out as fraudulent, most of them biased toward Mr. Karzai.

The election was headed for a second round before Mr. Abdullah stepped aside under pressure from some of his own Afghan political allies and American officials eager to see the crisis defused.

This time, the Abdullah campaign official said, Mr. Abdullah believed that nothing good would come of his stepping aside to avoid a crisis. Allowing fraud to prevail would harm the country, the official said.

Though supporters of Mr. Abdullah's campaign have been careful not to claim outright victory, they have strongly suggested that the only legitimate outcome was their candidate's being elected president.

Asked if Mr. Abdullah's supporters, including powerful former warlords and militia commanders, would mobilize to support their candidate, the official said the campaign would "always ask them to show restraint."

Though it is difficult to judge the fraud claims this early in the process, many observers and officials were shocked with the numbers released by the election commission Saturday night, given the mass of anecdotal evidence suggesting far smaller crowds at the polls in much of the country. If the fraud is as widespread as the Abdullah camp has alleged, it will be a deep blow to Afghanistan, where the election, until now, had been seen as relatively successful, and perhaps a sign of better things to come.

Abdullah campaign officials offered a variety of unverified numbers to support their case, pointing to insecure provinces in the east where, they said, voter turnout far exceeded the number of registered voters.

Another drama that has consumed Kabul in the aftermath of the vote is an allegation that a top election official was caught with a truckload of blank ballots, driving them to an insecure area on the outskirts of Kabul without the mandatory police escort.

Mr. Abdullah has publicly called for the removal of the official, Zia ul-Haq Amerkhel. The election commission has denied the allegations.

 

[Free Karma]

Afghanistan's Abdullah calls on election officials to halt count

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah on Wednesday demanded election organisers stop counting ballots because of what he said was widespread fraud, potentially derailing what is seen as a make-or-break vote before most foreign troops leave.

Millions of Afghans turned out on Saturday for a second-round run-off to elect a successor to President Hamid Karzai, a decisive test of the country's ambitions to transfer power democratically for the first time in its tumultuous history.

The run-off pitted former anti-Taliban fighter and former foreign minister Abdullah against ex-World Bank economist and former finance minister Ashraf Ghani after neither secured the 50 percent needed to win outright in the first round on April 5.

Afghanistan has for months been consumed by the electoral process which has been marred by attacks by the Taliban who say the vote is a U.S. ploy.

Abdullah said preliminary figures and other evidence collected by his team showed mass fraud had undermined the process.

"The counting process should stop immediately and if that continues, it will have no legitimacy," Abdullah told reporters.

Afghanistan's foreign backers have long worried that complaints of fraud coupled with a close outcome could give the losing candidate ground to refuse to accept defeat, leading to a struggle for power.

Abdullah's remarks pushed the country closer to that worst-case scenario with many ballot boxes yet to even reach the capital for counting.

Abdullah's base of support is with the ethnic Tajik minority while his rival Ghani, is a Pashtun. Pashtuns are the biggest ethnic group with about 45 percent of the population.

"From now on, today, we announce that we have no confidence or trust in the election bodies," Abdullah said. "I call on all our observers to abandon monitoring and return to our provincial offices."

When asked if there was any way to salvage the election, Abdullah said the United Nations might be able to intervene and oversee the counting process.

A spokesman said the United Nations was surprised by Abdullah's announcement and regretted it.

"We will work with both campaigns and the (election) commission, consulting with them on the way forward and we believe due process should continue," the U.N. spokesman said.

CONTRADICTORY DATA

Ghani was not immediately available for comment but this week he urged all parties to respect the political process.

Incumbent President Karzai is constitutionally barred from running for a third term, but has long repeated he is neutral, denying claims made by Abdullah's camp that he interfered in Ghani's favour.

Abdullah began complaining about widespread ballot stuffing and political interference on the day of the vote. There are several sets of preliminary voting figures in circulation offering contradictory results.

In one group of raw data provided to Reuters by an employee of the Independent Election Commission, Ghani is about eight percentage points ahead with just over half a million votes more than his rival.

In a second set of data provided to Reuters by Abdullah's team, Abdullah is in the lead by about four percentage points.

This contradicted earlier claims made by Abdullah in a briefing with reporters on Monday that Ghani was in the lead by about a million votes. His spokesman later said the numbers provided were inaccurate.

The timing of the election is especially critical because most foreign troops are due to withdraw this year, leaving behind a still strong Taliban insurgency and a deepening economic crisis.

Over his final term in office, Karzai's relationship with the West has grown increasingly bitter, culminating in his refusal late last year to sign a deal with the United States allowing it to leave a small contingent of U.S. troops to stay beyond 2014.

Despite the billions spent on reconstruction, Afghanistan relies on aid for much of its income and some donors may refuse to disburse cash if there is no international force on the ground.

Karzai's administration has also failure to pass laws demanded by the international community meaning that its banks may be put on an international blacklist later this month, potentially disrupting $10 billion worth of annual imports.

 

[nrupatunga]

@datguy79 @MLRS

So now abdullah calls off his observers from counting centers, so what next?? Is ashraf ghani taking over. Am not sure at least from a indian pov thats good.

https://twitter.com/TOLOnews/status/479242517070626817
[tweet]479242517070626817[/tweet]

https://twitter.com/TOLOnews/status/479251326681882624
[tweet]479251326681882624[/tweet]

 

[datguy79]

@datguy79 @MLRS

So now abdullah calls off his observers from counting centers, so what next?? Is ashraf ghani taking over. Am not sure at least from a indian pov thats good.

https://twitter.com/TOLOnews/status/479242517070626817
[tweet]479242517070626817[/tweet]

https://twitter.com/TOLOnews/status/479251326681882624
[tweet]479251326681882624[/tweet]

Sorry in advance. The forum is not displaying correctly for me, everything is jumbled up.

Abdullah is right to demand a thorough investigation. In the three provinces of Paktia, Paktika and Khost, the number of votes far exceeds the adult population. The presidency is far less important right now than having an election without fraud. If not things could get ugly real fast.

Ghani would be a weak president. He is basically like Karzai but unlike Karzai he lacks the ability to manipulate one group against another to keep himself afloat. In essence he will be a puppet for Dostum.

Nevertheless, if anyone becomes president through fraud, it is not far-fetched to say that the country will face real crisis and maybe civil war.

 

[Free Karma]

Breakthrough?
Abdullah 'open to talk' after Afghan election official quits

KABUL, Afghanistan – A top Afghan election official accused of fraud resigned Monday, raising the chances of a breakthrough in a political deadlock that threatens to derail the country's presidential election as NATO troops withdraw.

Zia-ul-Haq Amarkhail, head of the secretariat of the Independent Election Commission (IEC), denied all charges against him but said he was stepping down to save the election process. Election candidate Abdullah Abdullah has boycotted the vote count, accusing the IEC of being biased against him after the run-off vote against his rival Ashraf Ghani a week ago.

Now the door is open for us to talk to the (election) commission and talk about the conditions and circumstances that will help the process," Abdullah told reporters after Amarkhail resigned. Abdullah's campaign team on Sunday released audio recordings that they said contained evidence of fraud committed by Amarkhail.

"For the sake of Afghanistan, for the sake of the election process, I am resigning from my post," Amarkhail said. "I have resigned only to protect the election process, and so that Dr Abdullah Abdullah can put an end to his boycott and resume his relationship with the IEC. "The audio recordings regarding fraud were fake."

 

[nrupatunga]

@datguy79 @MLRS

Any updates??