KABUL: Afghanistan on Wednesday released final results from its controversial parliamentary election after massive fraud saw nearly a quarter of votes cancelled and 24 winners disqualified.
The main opponent of President Hamid Karzai swiftly claimed that his supporters had won more than 90 seats and would be able to exert significant pressure despite falling short of a majority in the 249-member chamber.
The Independent Election Commission (IEC) declared the vote a “major success,” but disqualified another three people who won seats according to preliminary results and delayed certified results from one troubled province.
The September 18 parliamentary poll was Afghanistan’s second since the 2001 US-led invasion brought down the Taliban, but results took far longer than expected to compile because of investigations into widespread corruption.
The irregularities dampened Western hopes that the election would be an improvement on the fraud-tarnished 2009 presidential vote which cast a long pall over Karzai’s return to power and his pledge to wipe out corruption.
The IEC named winners of 238 seats, leaving 11 still uncertified due to “technical problems” from the southern province of Ghazni, where Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns, apparently suffered a crushing defeat.
Preliminary results gave ethnic Hazaras all 11 seats in the province, a flashpoint in the nine-year Taliban insurgency. IEC chairman Fazil Ahmad Manawi said Ghazni had the largest number of polling stations shut due to insecurity.
“Even in areas where polling sites were open, people did not turn up to vote,” Manawi said. In one district, for instance, only three votes were cast.
The ethnic split of the vote could also spark controversy. A senior election official speaking on condition of anonymity said Pashtuns, the country’s traditional rulers, won about 88 seats compared with 112 last time.
Emerging opposition leader Abdullah Abdullah later told reporters: “A significant number of our candidates made it through, more than 90.”
The former eye surgeon’s father was Pashtun, but his mother is an ethnic Tajik and he is associated with the Tajiks of the late anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Massoud’s stronghold in the Panjshir Valley, north of Kabul.
