Karzai to face run election runoff

[Thac0man]

Best news I have heard all week:

RTÉ News: Runoff in Afghan election expected - report

I am hoping Abdullah Abdullah can swing it, I really do. As Karzai is under a cloud form the vote rigging that happened in the first round he may stand a chance.

Afghanistan badly needs a change of leadersip for the sake of its democracy and the direction it internal policy is going.

The 47% Karzai now has includes an aweful lot of ballots that were seriously disputed, not lest by Peter Galbraith. So its likely that his final tally will be less. The quesiton is what percentage will his actual vote translate into.

[Clanrickard]

He was set to win it but the vote rigging was so egregious that they had to have a run off or face the wrath of almost every international organisation.

[The Caped Cod]

I think we can assume that anyone who even presents themself in the election will have been pre-approved by the US.

[cactusflower]

Not only the vote rigging - there was mass protest abstentionism from the elections.

[Clanrickard]

I think we can assume that anyone who even presents themself in the election will have been pre-approved by the US.

Not true and you have no evidence for same. At this stage the US would take anyone as long as they were elected in an election that was even half honest so they could get the hell out.

[Thac0man]

Two stories that preceded this:

Karzai questions the election panel:
BBC NEWS | South Asia | Karzai questions vote fraud panel

While Abdullah Abdullah expressed confidance in it:
BBC NEWS | South Asia | Karzai rival backs election panel

So it seems which way the wind is blowing was known to both before this latest indication. We should be cautious though, there has been no official announcement.

But, a Karzai official has said:

Speaking at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, Mr Jawad said a run-off was "a likely scenario".
"If that's what it is, everyone should work very hard to make that happen," he said.

From the bbc:
BBC NEWS | South Asia | Afghan envoy says run-off likely


An official ruling is expected within days.

[Thac0man]

Great News. The UN backed election commision has declared Karzai does not have the 50% required to avoid a run off once fraudulent ballots are discounted.

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Karzai 'stripped of outright win'

There finding is subject to a possible legal challange from Karzai.

[cyberianpan]

The timeline on this was curious... initially the UN sought to stymie investigations into the vote rigging, firing its deputy head of mission for raising the issue

Obama's Afpak strategy has become increasingly up for grabs over the same time period, with the official line finally becoming evident yesterday: that basically Obama doesn't trust the Afghan government.

Of course the man the UN threw out of Kabul, Peter Galbraith is close friends with Obama's czar for Afpak, Richard Holbrooke ...

cYp

[cactusflower]

What do you make of all that cyberianpan ?

Brzezinski is now saying that the Aghans are not capable of having an election and should be allowed to choose their leaders in tribal gatherings (thinks - isn't that what they have been doing anyway?)

The big chess game is looking more and more like a drunken game of toss the penny.


Intersting Euro / US clash. Have the US junked the idea of "democracy" completely ?

The IEC were preparing to announce the last 15 per cent of ballots, coming from the most controversial areas of the south and Badghis province in the north. All are expected to return big majorities for Mr Karzai. Mr Galbraith then stepped in and forced the more robust line from the IEC, forcing them to agree not to announce the controversial last results.

At a meeting with IEC officials on Sunday, Mr Galbraith “laid into the commissioners, in front of the donors and observers” and demanded to know why they had not started printing ballot papers as part of a run-off contingency plan.

Mr Eide, now back in Kabul, has urged his staff not to speak out against the fraud because he fears that it will destabilise efforts to build a democracy. He is also afraid that fraud investigations will be seen as foreign interference, because three of the five people in charge of the Election Complaints Commission are UN appointees.

[Thac0man]

The timeline on this was curious... initially the UN sought to stymie investigations into the vote rigging, firing its deputy head of mission for raising the issue

Obama's Afpak strategy has become increasingly up for grabs over the same time period, with the official line finally becoming evident yesterday: that basically Obama doesn't trust the Afghan government.

Of course the man the UN threw out of Kabul, Peter Galbraith is close friends with Obama's czar for Afpak, Richard Holbrooke ...

cYp

The timeline has born out the UNs approach of being nonconfrontational. Its probable the UN mission head calculated how many of the blatently fraudulantly ballots would need to be dismissed to get a re-run, while avoiding a direct clash with Karzai early on - which Galbraiths approach would have provoked.

If Galbraiths larger recount had gone ahead, its likely Karzai would have put a stop to it sooner. The conclusions however would have been pretty much the same, but taken longer to come out (if it ever did). As it is the results are out and a runoff is the outcome anyway. I think the UN may be guilty of playing its cards close to its chest, but thats all. Exposing fraud and forcing a re-run was preferable to trying to dismiss the entire result and anul the election itself. The runoff is essentially a new election.