Afghanistan's Abdullah threatens to withdraw from recount process
Presidential candidate Abdullah's threat ratchets up tension over a disputed election recount, which both candidates had agreed to in response to allegations of mass fraud.
Presidential candidate Abdullah's threat ratchets up tension over a disputed election recount, which both candidates had agreed to in response to allegations of mass fraud.
The team of Afghanistan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah today added further turmoil to a delayed and bitter election process by threatening to withdraw from a United Nations-assisted vote audit within 24 hours.
Fazal Ahmad Manawi, an adviser to Mr. Abdullah, told reporters in Kabul that the audit of more than 8 million ballots from the June 14 runoff election is a 鈥渏oke鈥� and called for the immediate adoption of stricter procedures in order to identify and destroy fraudulent ballots.
鈥淚f by tomorrow morning our demands 鈥� are not accepted, our patience has ultimately run out,鈥� Mr. Manawi said, according to The Washington Post. 鈥淲e will consider this process a finished one, will not continue in it and not accept it, and the results will have no value to us.鈥�
There was no immediate response from opponent Ashraf Ghani鈥檚 camp. A fight broke out between Abdullah and Mr. Ghani鈥檚 supporters after the announcement at the headquarters of the Independent Election Commission, where the audit is being run, The New York Times reports.聽
Today鈥檚 demand is the latest escalation of a crisis that threatens to drag Afghanistan into a prolonged political conflict just as the US prepares to withdraw most of its combat forces by the end of this year. Adding urgency is current President Hamid Karzai鈥檚 insistence that he will leave office next week.
It was also hoped that a new Afghanistan president would be installed in time for a NATO meeting Sept. 4-5 to discuss continued aid to Afghanistan, a goal that looks increasingly unrealistic.
How did we get here?
Abdullah won the first round of voting between 10 candidates in May, but not by enough votes to avoid a runoff. He claims that mass fraud was orchestrated in the second round of voting in June in order to give victory to Ghani.
Afghanistan鈥檚 Independent Election Commission (IEC), the body overseeing the elections, said in July that preliminary results show Ghani won the election with 56 percent of the vote, earning just over 1 million more votes than Abdullah.聽
US Secretary of State John Kerry has flown to Kabul twice this summer, mostly recently on Aug. 8, to broker a deal between Abdullah and Ghani. Mr. Kerry received promises from both candidates to respect the outcome of an audit of all 8 million votes cast in the runoff election and to give a meaningful role in the government to the losing side.
Today鈥檚 announcement raises doubt that Kerry鈥檚 deal will stand.
Driving the dispute
Yesterday, the IEC began the process of declaring fraudulent votes invalid. Abdullah鈥檚 campaign said that too few votes were being thrown out, resulting in their ultimatum today.
Part of the dispute is also centered on the splitting of the audit into a 鈥渘ormal audit鈥� and a 鈥渟pecial audit,鈥� the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN) explains. Although Abdullah鈥檚 team had been pushing for the creation of a special audit that singled out ballots for extra scrutiny, the effort has been plagued by delays and the Ghani camp has different ideas about its importance:
There are also concerns about ethnic unrest, should the election process unravel further, the Washington Post notes.
What happens next?
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan will increase its participation "to ensure the continuing credibility of the process" of the audit if one of the campaigns backs out, the mission said in a statement today.