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Afghan official: Crisis brewing over election
Associated Press - December 12, 2010
Rahim Faiez and Heidi Vogt, Kabul, Afghanistan – The head of Afghanistan's election commission warned Sunday that a push by the attorney general to challenge the results of September's parliamentary vote could spark a national crisis.
Final results from the Sept. 18 vote were announced on Dec. 1 but uncertainty has continued to surround the poll because of charges by Attorney Gen. Mohammad Ishaq Alako that votes were bought and sold to such an extent that the results could be invalid.
Many had hoped the vote would prove a success story for the government of President Hamid Karzai after a fraud-marred presidential poll hurt his credibility last year. Instead, the latest vote has been just as mired in allegations of fraud and state-sanctioned cheating.
Alako, a presidential appointee, has sent a letter to the Supreme Court asking it to annul the results of the latest election and issue sentences against 14 top officials who organized the vote and oversaw fraud investigations, according to Rahmatullah Nazari, the deputy attorney general.
"We have demanded that the Supreme Court cancel the results of the election," Nazari told Afghanistan's Tolo TV in an interview aired late Saturday.
Election Commission Chairman Fazel Ahmad Manawi said that annulling the vote goes well beyond the authority of the attorney general's office. He said the law provides only for the election commission and the dedicated fraud investigation panel to alter the results of the vote.
"According to the law, no other institutions inside or outside of the country have the authority to bring the legitimacy of the election into question," Manawi said. And now that final results have been released, those cannot be changed even by his own commission, he said.
Manawi said he stands ready to discuss the issue, but cautioned that the attorney general's office appears to be ignoring the law entirely.
"If they want to have any debate about electoral law and the constitution of the country, we are ready for that," Manawi said. "But if they just want to exert power and authority I think that this country will go into a crisis."
He declined to be drawn into the nature of the crisis he was predicting, saying only: "Over these decades of war and conflict in our country, we all know what a crisis looks like."
Nazari also said they intend to prosecute 14 top members of the Independent Election Commission and the fraud-investigating Electoral Complaints Commission.
"We have collected more than 20 pieces of evidence against them and based on this evidence we have demanded that they be punished," Nazari said. The evidence includes written agreements for payouts concerning the election, along with falsified documents from the commission, he said.
Manawi said that he had seen the letter and that it called for the "harshest punishment" for the commissioners – meaning the death penalty.
Alako previously threatened to arrest the spokesmen for both organizations, but no action was taken against them. He has, however, arrested eight employees of the election commission, though half of those were detained in connection with allegations from last year's presidential vote.
It is unclear if the opening session of parliament will be delayed by the tussle over the results.
The legislature is currently on its winter break and would not normally reconvene until mid-January.
Groups of parliamentarians have met with President Hamid Karzai multiple times in the last week to try to bring forward the inaugural session or postpone it until the Supreme Court rules on the issue.
Karzai has walked a middle line – not saying when he will announce the start of the session but also saying he will not hold it back.
"Everything will happen as per the instruction of the constitution," presidential spokesman Waheed Omar said. "The president is not holding the inauguration; we understand relevant bodies have started preparing for it."
Neither the Afghan constitution nor electoral law set a timeline for when parliament must start work after an election. It is up to the president to set the date.
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