Kabul: Afghanistan’s presidential aspirants fear fraud will once again disrupt the electioneering.
The April 5th elections will see the emergence of a new president, with Hamid Karzai’s second term endind. The new president will either take the nation into peace and prosperity or endanger peace by allowing the Talibanisation of the country. Â
Abdullah Abdullah, one of the frontrunners, has reiterated his concerns about large-scale fraud. His rival, the former finance Minister Ashraf Ghani, told The Guardian, his team was trying to pre-empt the kind of fraud that riddled 2009 voting, adding, “People will not be deprived of their right to good governanceâ€.
Karzai who won that year (2009) received over 50% of the votes. It is widely believed that electoral fraud caused his comeback even though he had become largely unpopular after his first term.
Large-scale cheating has marred every Afghan election since the Taliban’s fall. A recent survey by the Free and Fair Election Forum of Afghanistan found that only a quarter of Afghans expect the vote to be clean. Election organisers, monitors and diplomats all agree that ballot-stuffing, vote buying, intimidation and impersonation are likely to be a problem again.
Votes will be tallied on site and copies of the results sheet posted outside the ballot station, in the ballot box and sent to Kabul. Vote-counting will be done twice by two separate teams; where results differ they will be rechecked.