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Karzai headed for Afghan vote win; watchdog finds fraud
Tue Sep 8, 2009 10:49am EDT
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By Peter Graff and Jonathon Burch
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan election returns released on Tuesday put incumbent Hamid Karzai on course for a single round victory, but a U.N.-backed watchdog said it had found "clear and convincing evidence of fraud" and ordered a partial recount.
The latest data from the Independent Election Commission effectively put Karzai and the Afghan election authorities on a collision course with an international community increasingly skeptical of the outcome of an election it paid for.
Officials said pursuing allegations of fraud in the poll -- held last month -- could postpone a final result for two to three months and keep Afghanistan in a prolonged state of limbo.
With 91.6 percent of polling stations counted, the Independent Election Commission reported Karzai ahead with 54.1 percent of the vote to 28.3 percent for his main challenger, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah.
It was the first time the commission had reported Karzai on course to exceed the 50 percent threshold needed to win outright and avoid a second round and radically alters the calculations of Western diplomats keen to ensure a credible outcome.
The results are final only after they are certified by the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC), a separate body led by a Canadian and mainly appointed by the United Nations. For the first time, it went public with accusations of fraud.
"In the course of its investigations, the ECC has found clear and convincing evidence of fraud in a number of polling stations," the body said in a statement.
It ordered the IEC to recount results from polling stations where one candidate received more than 95 percent of the vote or where more votes were cast than the expected maximum of 600.
Most of the stations where it found fraud had either a larger than expected number of total votes cast, or a higher than expected proportion cast for a single candidate, it said.
For a graphic, click here
Speaking after the announcement of Tuesday's partial results, U.N. spokesman Aleem Siddique said all allegations of fraud had to be investigated and fraudulent ballots had to be thrown out.
"There are no winners in this election until the complaints are fully investigated by the Electoral Complaints Commission and there is a partial recount as ordered by the ECC," said Siddique.
The election commission said it was already fighting fraud and had set aside results from more than 600 of the country's 25,000 polling stations because of concerns over irregularities.
Some suspicious results posted earlier -- including from a village where Karzai received every single vote cast including exactly 500 at each of four separate polling stations -- were removed from the commission's web site without explanation.
Commission member Daoud Ali Najafi said it could take two to three months to comply with the ECC's order. A second round, if needed, would be difficult to hold in Afghanistan beyond the end of October because of extreme weather. Continued...
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