Phony polling places go big for Karzai
NY Times:
The Washington Times and CNN are now reporting that votes from 447 polling stations have been rejected as fraudulent. The Washington Times puts the number ov votes at issue as close to 200,000. CNN has a lower figure. My guess is all those votes were for Karzai. It is not clear whether those votes had been including in the running tally showing Karzai with a lead.
Afghans loyal to President Hamid Karzai set up hundreds of fictitious polling sites where no one voted but where hundreds of thousands of ballots were still recorded toward the president’s re-election, according to senior Western and Afghan officials here.The only way legitimacy can be restored is to have a runoff with Abdullah. The election officials need to set aside the challenged ballots. We need to be prepared to protect these officials. Karzai also needs to worry not only about legitimacy with Afghanistan, but also with the rest of the world. He has to know that he cannot fight the Taliban alone.The fake sites, as many as 800, existed only on paper, said a senior Western diplomat in Afghanistan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the political delicacy of the vote. Local workers reported that hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of votes for Mr. Karzai in the election last month came from each of those places. That pattern was confirmed by another Western official based in Afghanistan.
“We think that about 15 percent of the polling sites never opened on Election Day,” the senior Western diplomat said. “But they still managed to report thousands of ballots for Karzai.”Besides creating the fake sites, Mr. Karzai’s supporters also took over approximately 800 legitimate polling centers and used them to fraudulently report tens of thousands of additional ballots for Mr. Karzai, the officials said.
The result, the officials said, is that in some provinces, the pro-Karzai ballots may exceed the people who actually voted by a factor of 10. “We are talking about orders of magnitude,” the senior Western diplomat said.
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The Washington Times and CNN are now reporting that votes from 447 polling stations have been rejected as fraudulent. The Washington Times puts the number ov votes at issue as close to 200,000. CNN has a lower figure. My guess is all those votes were for Karzai. It is not clear whether those votes had been including in the running tally showing Karzai with a lead.
If Karzai were smart, if he were experienced with the political process, he would declare a runoff now, before the vote count is done. By doing so, he would give the appearance of putting his country's interests above his own. He would be able to say to those who accuse him (probably accurately) of vote fraud that he is willing to abide by the election results (which are probably going to require a runoff anyway). This, coupled with the fact that he did, honestly, get more of the vote than anyone else, will mean that he will most likely win the runoff hands down.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that he doesn't call for a runoff now, but instead is trying to avoid one, is a sign that he still lacks political sophistication.