Complaints of fraud nearly triple in Afghan disputed elections

President Hamid KarzaiKabul  - Over 2,000 complaints of fraud, with more than 560 of them considered to be serious enough to affect the results of Afghanistan's hotly disputed presidential vote on August 20, have been lodged so far, the UN-backed Election Complaints Commission ECC said Sunday.

The figure is nearly triple the number of complaints which had been filed with ECC last week. The body had received 790 complaints by last Tuesday.

Ahmad Muslim Khuram, a spokesman for ECC, said Sunday that 2,026 complaints had now been received, with 567 of them classified "high priority," meaning they could affect the outcome of the elections and threaten the legitimacy of the vote if proved true.

Most of the allegations were about fraud engineered by candidates or their supporters, intimidation of the voters and ballot stuffing, he said.

The high number of complaints raises concern whether the losing candidates would accept the outcome of the election, which is the second direct vote in the recent history of Afghanistan, and whether the election itself be credible before the eyes of the Afghans.

With the votes partially counted, President Hamid Karzai wasleading with 46 per cent, while his main rival, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, had garnered 31 per cent. The count is based on 35 per cent of country's 28,000 polling stations tallied as of Saturday evening.

Karzai's team has already claimed there would be no need for a run-off as the incumbent received more than 60 per cent of the votes by their calculation which they said were obtained from the polling stations.

Major candidates, including Abdullah, have accused the Karzai camp of electoral fraud. Abdullah has warned that he would not accept the results unless the fraud complaints were duly investigated.

Their allegations include ballot stuffing, proxy voting, and under-age voting throughout Afghanistan, while the staffers for the election commission were also accused of working for particular candidates in different parts of war-torn country.

In the past week, Abdullah held two news conferences to express his dissatisfaction with "big fraud," accusing Karzai of rigging the election.

A coalition of six out of some 30 candidates also warned in a joint statement on Wednesday that "fraudulent elections" would increase tension and violence in Afghanistan.

With initial tallies suggesting that around 5.5 million out of 30 million Afghans cast their ballots in the election, analysts believe that increasing allegations of fraud would not only damage the credibility of the results, but would also bring into question the legitimacy of any future government.

Karzai needs to gain more than 50 per cent of the votes to win the election outright and avoid a run-off. The official results will not be available before mid-September.  dpa