Sunday, September 13, 2009

Opposition leader Abdullah calls for criminal inquiry into vote rigging

www.timesonline.co.uk
Afghanistan’s opposition leader has called for a criminal investigation into allegations of massive vote rigging in last month’s elections — and accused his rival, President Hamid Karzai, of treason in an exclusive interview with The Times.

Abdullah Abdullah, the country’s former foreign minister, charged Mr Karzai with “state-engineered fraud” in the August 20 polls. “It’s worse than a crime, it’s treason,” he said, adding that Mr Karzai “doesn’t think about the country, he thinks only of himself. He has been caught red-handed.”

Mr Abdullah is trailing Mr Karzai in partial results published by the Independent Elections Commission (IEC), an organisation that he claims is under the control of the President’s supporters. A UN-backed elections watchdog ordered the IEC to begin a massive recount of votes last week, saying that it had unearthed “clear and convincing evidence of fraud”.

Although Mr Karzai narrowly passed the 50 per cent threshold that would allow him to avoid a run-off, the recount could push his support back below that level, meaning that the country might have to vote for a second time.

The IEC has given warning that the process could take months, by which time Afghanistan’s harsh winter will have set in, possibly precluding another vote until the spring. The process could leave the country rudderless for months at a time when the Taleban is re-emerging as a dangerous force. Both sides have rejected international calls for a unity government.

“What’s at stake is Afghanistan, the future of this country,” said Mr Abdullah. “The country will die because of this sort of thing. Fraud is the extension of this corruption which prevailed in this system.”

Mr Abdullah acknowledged that although an investigation was required, there was at present no independent judiciary to take up the task. He said that an interim government was needed to run the country, not only to take it through the end of Mr Karzai’s mandate, which expired officially in May, but also to prevent him from manipulating a second round of voting.

“Let’s get to an interim situation so he’s not on top of that. There has to be some new measures because we’ll go the same path with the same people,” said Mr Abdullah, reeling off examples of ministries and government institutions that he claimed had been used by Mr Karzai to manipulate the original election.

One of those compromised institutions is the Arbakai, the government-sponsored tribal militias that protect many of the country’s highways and official institutions. Mr Abdullah said that funds set aside to allow the Arbakai to guard polling centres — a move blocked at the last minute by the international community over fears of voter intimidation — had been siphoned off to pay tribal elders to vote for Mr Karzai.

That allegation has been backed up by international election monitors, who cited numerous witness testimonies indicating that the Arbakai had been manipulated to support the president’s re-election campaign.

Observers said that Arbakai cash had been handed out to tribal elders in Gardez, the capital of the southeastern province of Paktia, to convince their communities to vote for Mr Karzai, in particular by accepting the voting cards of women who did not go to polling stations on election day because of security concerns.

Witnesses said that some of the elders had been paid $4,000, (£2,395) and one as much as $8,000, to ensure their loyalty.

“That’s everybody’s tax dollars directly going to corruption,” said Mr Abdullah. “Hopefully we can save the process. If we can’t, I don’t think this situation can sustain itself. This jeopardizes the remaining opportunity that we have, which is the support of the international community. Your soldiers are dying and on top of every other problem there is illegitimate rule for another five years.”

His comments came during a weekend which saw a fresh surge of violence, as Taleban militants killed 45 people, including five American soldiers, in a number of attacks and bombings across the country.

Last week, the International Council on Security and Development, an independent think-tank operating in Afghanistan, warned that the Taleban had established a permanent presence in 80 per cent of the country and a “substantial” presence in a further 17 per cent of it.

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