Afghanistan’s fraudulent election win for President Harmid Karzai will be put to the test in a run-off election in November against chief rival Abdullah Abdullah. The United Nations said that the election result was so clearly fraudulent and unreliable that they could only eliminate 34 of the 36 candidates.
Hamid Karzai says he’s confident he will win the run-off election, and his opponent will run off.
The Taliban are holding their own run-off election, where they win 100% of the vote and everyone else runs off.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said it would be a “huge challenge” to pull of the run-off election without the same problems of fraud. No matter how fair Karzai wants to be, fraud just does its own thing. / once voters have been invented, you can’t just kill them. / those Afghanis just can’t be trusted. / the phantom voters have to vote for someone.
Even if the vote is fair, Karzai is still expected to win. But he won’t be able to help himself – it just doesn’t feel like politics without a little corruption.
Of course corruption will be hard to police. With fresh water in short supply, some people still have their fingers marked from the last time they voted.
Taliban militants are also expected to disrupt the run-off election. During the original election, they cut off the ink-marked fingers of those who had voted – though, ironically, this just made it easier to vote again.
In some areas the ink-stained fingers of people who had voted were cut off by Taliban vigilantes. Which is really just a more permanent way of marking them off the roll. / of preventing them voting twice. Now THAT would be corrupt.
In the previous election, Taliban militants cut off the ink-marked fingers of those who had voted. And there’s only so many run-off elections you can vote in before you can no longer hold the ballot paper.
Mr Abdullah has called on Afghani officials to organise a “free, fair, and credible” election, with enough security to ensure voters aren’t intimidated, or at least are intimidated into voting for him instead.
Karzai’s rival Abdullah Abdullah is confident of winning the run-off election. He’s got some fantastic new rigging techniques.
Karzai’s rival Abdullah Abdullah is confident of winning the run-off election, as he and his supporters have been working hard on ballot-stuffing and intimidation. / now that he knows how it’s done.
Despite his record of corruption and fraud, Karzai is still favourite to win. Afghanis couldn’t stand the teasing of having a President named Abdullah Abdullah.
Karzai agreed to the run-off election after a day of intensive talks with US Senator John Kerry, who seems much more concerned with fraud in the Afghani election than he was in the fraud that may have cost him the US Presidency.
Senator Kerry then praised Karzai for his “genuine leadership”. Shame to see him go, really. / It’d be a real shame to lose such a great leader in some sort of, you know, election.
Sure, the elections were corrupt, but only because the Afghanis had no idea that intimidating or killing voters was undemocratic. They’re just new at all this!
Karzai didn’t need to rig the election. It’s just the Afghani way.
But really, who wants to rule a country like Afghanistan? They shouldn’t have a vote – they should pull straws. “Ah, sorry mate – you’re prez.”
Mr Karzai is still the favourite by a long shot. So really, the fact the election was undemocratic is just a lucky coincidence for the USA.
The US is hoping the run-off election will fully legitimise their hand-picked, corrupt, election-rigging puppet.
The US is angry at Karzai. If they had have known he was corrupt and undemocratic, they would’ve hand-picked another puppet!
Obama’s administration wants a credible, legitimate government in Afghanistan, which will in turn win the U.S support for the war back home. Although, I would’ve thought that having a credible and legitimate government in Afghanistan makes it HARDER to justify bombing the living crap out of it.
Mr Karzai is the favourite to win the next election. Which means he probably would’ve won the last one legitimately, if the elections hadn’t been fraught with intimidation and vote-stuffing. Which means the people behind the intimidation and vote-stuffing are most likely the people who benefit most from him NOT being leader – which is the USA. Conspiracy – or standard US foreign policy?
But even if he loses the run-off election, the US has guaranteed Abdullah Abdullah a great career as a Hollywood bad guy.
