Posts Tagged ‘elections’

A former Iranian government spokesman has been jailed for six years. Iranian media reported that Abdullah Ramezanzadeh was convicted of trying to topple the government during protests after elections last June.  The charges against him included “acts against the national security, propaganda against the Islamic state and holding classified documents”.  Other opposition supporters have been sentenced to death by courts following the anti-government protests.  Mr Ramezanzadeh supported pro-reform candidate Mir Houssein Mosavi during the election.  He was a government spokesman under reformist President Mohammed Khatami between 1997 and 2005. Read the rest of this entry »

The re-elected Afghan President Hamid Karzai vows to root out corruption following stern warnings from Western supporters on the issue.

KABUL — Hamid Karzai, virtually assured another five years in power, is the former darling of the West whose fortunes have slumped since being catapulted to the Afghan leadership when the Taliban were toppled. Massive fraud clouded August’s election and disqualified about a third of his votes, casting a huge stain over his record, and threatening to undermine his future government and drag Afghanistan into further political chaos. Growing impatience from the 51-year-old’s international backers has mirrored a pattern that has seen some domestic allies turn their backs and his former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah withdraw from the election race. Corruption, a spiralling Taliban insurgency, the worst security in years, controversy over a women’s law and criticism of his choice of running mate have all contributed to a distinct cooling of ties between Karzai and the West.

In typically blunt fashion, Karzai dismissed allegations of widespread fraud in the August 20 poll as fabricated and politically driven. But as election organisers announced he had fallen a fraction short of outright victory, Karzai declared that he wanted to move on. “I call upon our nation to change this into an opportunity to strengthen our resolve and determination, to move our country forward and to participate in the new round of elections,” he said. The West congratulated Karzai for his statesman-like behaviour, but cynics pointed to the huge international pressure he was under, personified by the presence of US Senator John Key and senior envoys by his side. Since then, Karzai has appeared only on US television channels and refrained from making any personal response after Abdullah conditioned his participation in the run-off on the sacking of the election commission chief. His team said Abdullah has no right to interfere and on Sunday his rival pulled out of the November 7 vote. Read the rest of this entry »

The U.N. secretary-general has arrived in Kabul for meetings with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his former challenger. Ban Ki-moon’s arrival Monday comes at a politically sensitive time, following Abdullah Abdullah’s announcement that he is withdrawing from the presidential runoff vote because of concerns about fraud. His withdrawal effectively hands Mr. Karzai a re-election victory, although Afghan officials have said the November 7 vote will still go forward. The top U.N. envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, has said the election should now be brought to a conclusion in a legal and timely manner. Mr. Ban’s visit follows last week’s deadly attack on a guest house in Kabul that killed five foreign U.N. staff members. Following his arrival Monday, the U.N. chief vowed that the United Nations would continue to offer humanitarian assistance and development support for Afghanistan. Taliban militants took credit for the Kabul guesthouse attack, calling it a first step of a plan to disrupt the November 7 presidential election.

But Mr. Abdullah’s withdrawal now makes the vote a formality, if a final decision is for the election to take place. Mr. Abdullah said Sunday he could not accept a runoff overseen by the same people who were in charge of the first round of voting that was marred by widespread fraud. Mr. Abdullah stopped short of asking supporters to boycott the vote. He also urged supporters not to “take to the streets” when expressing their frustration. Election officials said that according to the country’s constitution, the second round must go ahead as scheduled. A spokesman for Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission told VOA that Mr. Abdullah had missed the deadline to officially withdraw from the race. His name remains on the ballot.Source

KABUL, Afghanistan — Nearly one in four votes in last month’s Afghan presidential elections were cast at polling stations now subject to a recount and audit for possible fraud, a huge number that underscores the possibility that President Hamid Karzai could face a runoff, according to an analysis of Afghan national election commission data by The New York Times.  About a third of Mr. Karzai’s 3.1 million votes were cast at polling stations that face a recount and audit of ballot boxes, according to The Times’s analysis of data released by the country’s Independent Election Commission. The analysis suggests that the magnitude of the fraud review is far greater than what has generally been understood. Last week, election officials said about 10 percent of polling stations would be subject to an examination ordered by the Electoral Complaints Commission, a United Nations-backed organization that is the ultimate arbiter of election results. But that figure vastly understates the scope of the fraud review, the Times analysis found. Based on the criteria set by the Electoral Complaints Commission, almost 3,000 of the 23,000 polling stations would be subject to the fraud review. Moreover, those polling stations account for a large proportion of ballots, some 1.35 million of 5.66 million total votes, the analysis showed. The analysis also shows that slightly more than a quarter-million of Mr. Karzai’s votes came from polling stations where he received exactly 600 ballots and no other candidate received a single vote. Polling stations were generally allocated 600 ballots apiece, though in certain cases they were allowed to borrow ballots from other stations.

All told, Mr. Karzai received nearly a half-million votes from polling stations where at least 100 votes were cast but no other candidate received a single vote. Mr. Karzai won 54.6 percent of the Aug. 20 vote, according to the preliminary tally. But if his final total falls below 50 percent because votes are thrown out during the review, he will face a runoff election against his most popular challenger, former Foreign MinisterAbdullah Abdullah, who won 27.8 percent of the vote. Mr. Karzai’s vote count appears to be more vulnerable to the review than that of Mr. Abdullah. Only about one in eight of Mr. Abdullah’s votes were from polling stations subject to the recount and audit, the analysis found. It is impossible to know how many votes for either candidate will ultimately be discarded or whether a runoff will be called. One reason that such a high percentage of the total reported ballots will be subject to the fraud review is the large number of votes reported by nonexistent polling places, one Western diplomat said. “The phantom polling centers had a vastly disproportionate number of votes,” the diplomat said, declining to be identified according to diplomatic protocol. The official expressed concern that the recount and audit would be conducted not by examining every affected ballot box, but by statistical sampling, in which a representative proportion of the ballots are examined and those results used to extrapolate the total. Read the rest of this entry »