RSS
Home
Karzai named president in Afghanistan after Abdullah pulls out of run-off election
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
President Karzai looks on at a press conference earlier today.
Afghanistan’s presidential contender, Abdullah Abdullah, pulled out of the two-man run-off election against incumbent President Hamid Karzai on Sunday, saying that corruption and rampant electoral fraud would prohibit a fair election.
“I felt that it might not help the democratic process, it might not restore the faith of the people in (the) democratic process,” Abdullah said in an interview with the BBC. “It was a hard decision and a painful decision for me, but I did it... I thought that it would be in the best interests of the country if I decide not to participate.”
In the first round of voting, almost a million ballots cast for Karzai were deemed illegitimate and thrown out, bringing Karzai’s percentage of the vote to 49.67 percent – less than the 50 percent plus one vote minimum necessary to avoid a run-off. Abdullah won 31 percent of the vote according to the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission’s investigation.
The United States and several European leaders are ready to move forward with Karzai during his second five-year term. Advisers to President Barack Obama told The New York Times that Abdullah’s choice to drop out of the run-off does not change American policy, yet many people are expressing concern about the perceived legitimacy of Karzai’s government.
“This massive fraud has detracted from his authority and prestige,” Hamidullah Tarzi, an Afghan political analyst who served as a minister in two previous governments, said of Mr. Karzai in an interview with The New York Times. “Now the policy is not in the hands of Afghanistan. It is in the hands of the West.”
The Obama administration is focused now on how to legitimize and increase the capacity of the Afghan government.
President Obama called on President Karzai today to address the extensive corruption in his government, including accusations against Karzai’s brother and elected official, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who is suspected of being a major player in the illegal opium trade.
President Obama told The New York Times he is seeking “a sense on the part of President Karzai that, after some difficult years in which there has been some drift, that in fact he’s going to move boldly and forcefully forward and take advantage of the international community’s interest in his country to initiate reforms internally. That has to be one of our highest priorities.”
The US could try to leverage the number of American troops in Afghanistan as a political tool. Obama is currently considering whether to send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan and said that Karzai will be judged by deeds, not words, as he makes his decisions.
Related Articles:
Comments
