The preliminary results of the Afghan presidential election are out, but they promise only to deepen the country’s political crisis:
[W]hile the numbers show former World Bank official and finance minister Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai a winner in a landslide, his opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, has been positioning himself for weeks to reject the outcome, complaining that he suspects electoral fraud and tampering by members of the independent election commission could have skewed the outcome. Election results were delayed to allow for more auditing – something Mr. Abdullah welcomed – but in an interview on July 2 he also said that if fraudulent votes were winnowed out, the result would be “very different from what is perceived at this stage.” At that time, Mr. Ghani was felt by many to be in the lead. The results released today give Ghani just under 4.5 million votes, 56.4 percent of the total, with Abdullah’s share 3.46 million, or about 43.6 percent. …
It’s hard to believe the results will not lead to increasing ethnic tensions, since Abdullah estimated that about 2 million fraudulent votes need to be thrown out. That could be enough to overturn Ghani’s 1 million-plus vote lead at the moment (though some fraudulent votes certainly went to Abdullah as well). But it’s hard to see Ghani and his supporters accepting a situation where a huge lead in the preliminary results ends up being overturned.
Aarthi Gunasekaran sketches out what happens now:
Thousands of supporters have called on Abdullah to form his own parallel government, with Abdullah responding that this “is a demand from the people of Afghanistan [and he] cannot ignore this call” and that he would consult with his advisers and make an announcement in a few days.
Though an adviser to Abdullah told the BBC on Tuesday “we don’t believe in setting up parallel government,” the candidate’s comments were still met with sharp concerns. Secretary of State John Kerry declared there was no justification for “extra-constitutional measures” and will be meeting with key parties on Friday, July 11th.
The U.S. government underscored this sentiment stating that any action that would alter constitutional legalities could result in Afghanistan losing the financial and security support of the United States and the international community. This would plunge Afghanistan into a deep economic and security crisis as foreign aid constitutes for over 95 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP and in 2013, government revenues accounted for less than $2.5 billion of that year’s $7 billion adopted budget.
Abdullah’s claims of shenanigans have some merit, though:
In the eyes of Abdullah supporters, it is easy to question how Ghani could have more than doubled the number of votes he received in the runoff (going from about 2.2 million votes to over 4.4 million) while Abdullah, who had been far ahead, only added about three hundred thousand votes (going from 3.2 million to 3.5 millon). Somehow, we are supposed to believe that Abdullah has the support of only 44-45% of the Afghan electorate, no matter how many show up and that Ghani was able to magically obtain the vote of every Afghan who voted for someone other than Ghani or Abdullah in the first round while also getting 56% of those new more than one million voters who turned up for the runoff.
The Dish 