Afghan presidential election in crisis as candidate alleges 'blatant fraud'

Emma Graham-Harrison

Abdullah Abdullah calls for UN involvement, amid concerns over 'exaggerated' turnout in strongholds of rival Ashraf Ghani

Afghanistan's presidential election has been plunged into crisis after one candidate demanded a halt to vote counting, suspended cooperation with election authorities and called for a UN commission to mediate over cases of "blatant fraud".

It was an unexpectedly strong challenge to an election that had initially been celebrated as a qualified success, with high turnout in both the first round and a 14 June run-off, despite Taliban threats and violence.

Former foreign minister and mujahideen doctor Abdullah Abdullah had already signalled that he was unhappy about preliminary turnout figures for the second round, and wary of large leaps in voter numbers in the strongholds of his rival Ashraf Ghani, a former finance minister and World Bank technocrat.

But the force of his complaints and the extent of his demands raise the prospect of weeks of fraught disputes and further delays to a process that is already painfully slow. A final decision on who has won is not due until 22 July.

"We have asked our monitors to leave the offices of the [election] commission, and we are asking for the counting process to be stopped immediately," Abdullah told a news conference in Kabul.

"We all know that the turnout was not as high as it was said," he added. "The exaggerated number of votes reported from the provinces was not in proportion with that area, let alone the security situation."

Ghani said shortly after that his observers would continue to monitor vote tallying, and that stopping the count would be an insult to voters.

The election to choose a successor to President Hamid Karzai, who has ruled for over a decade, should pave the way for the country's first democratic transfer of power. Afghans hope the change will revitalise a feeble economy and perhaps push the country towards peace.

The speedy inauguration of a new leader is also vital to keeping US troops in the country past the end of this year to back up an Afghan army with limited capacity. They can only stay if Kabul signs a long-term security deal with Washington, and Karzai has deferred the decision to his successor.

The first round of voting in April was hailed as a victory for democracy, after voters turned out in unexpectedly high numbers and the results were broadly accepted by all candidates. The second round also appeared at first to have gone relatively smoothly.

An election observer mission from the US-based National Democratic Institute concluded two days after the poll that "the problems it observed did not appear to be widespread or systematic".

Since then questions have mounted about the leap in voter turnout in Ghani strongholds. His supporters say he effectively mobilised voters, especially conservatives from his own Pashtun ethnic group, who struck deals with Taliban commanders to allow villagers to go to the polls and reluctantly let women cast their ballots in defiance of tradition.

Abdullah and his backers have hinted instead that they used poor security and political influence to stuff ballot boxes on a scale that fits uneasily with population numbers for many areas.

Asked what might induce him to rejoin the vote counting process, Abdullah made a proposal likely to infuriate Karzai, who fought hard to ensure foreigners had no official role in running or monitoring the election.

"One way would be to form a joint committee between the two candidates under the supervision of the UN," Abdullah said. A UN spokesman said they were keen to support the election but had not received any suggestions of a new role for the organisation before the news conference.

The UN "regretted" Abdullah's decision to pull out his observers, spokesman Ari Gaitanis added, and called on both teams and their supporters to "act responsibly in the interest of national unity and avoid any statements or actions that could disrupt due process".