Afghanistan, Election and Alignment

Importance of Afghanistan election for its neighboring countries is so that any country because of its political, social or economic interests follow the results of election. Of course the importance of election will not be less than what is for its neighboring countries and it will be significant for peace, stability and security for Afghan people. And if the margin of votes between Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah becomes big, Afghanistan will enjoy more peace and stability.

IRAN NEWS POLITICAL DESK

On Saturday 28 September, Afghanistan held presidential elections and Ghani and Abdullah were major contenders but since the election has ended, Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan has not announced any result of the election.

Out of 13 contenders in the presidential election, two have won majority. In a press conference, Abdullah claimed that he has won the election by winning majority votes. At the same time, current Afghani President Ghani’s Chief Executive Abdullah Saleh declared that the information showed that 60-70% of people had voted to Ghani.

Now the big election challenge, which had begun the day before and election day by several terrorist attacks of Taliban and clashes with security forces leading to deaths and injuries of 500 people, now has ended and Afghan people are now waiting the Independent Election Commission’s announcement of the winner. Before the election kicks off, the commission had announced that it would take three weeks to announce the results of the election and election contenders should avoid declaring themselves winners till the commission’s announcement.

But by declaring victories by two contenders, it is expected to echo an election crisis five years ago when competing claims by the two men led to months of turmoil and it will deprive Afghan people from peace and stability in their country.

Fraidoon Khwazoon, spokesman to Abdullah’s election campaign team Peace and Moderation, on Abdollah’s declaring victory in the presidential election has said, “We had observers in any part of Afghanistan and supervised the election carefully. According to reports and statistics from our observers, Abdullah Abdullah has won the majority.”

According to Afghanistan election campaign, if any one of the contenders fails to win majority votes “50% plus 1”, it will lead to run-off. According to reports, nine million people had enrolled to vote but only around two million people went to the polls and cast their votes and the figure shows 20 percent participation in the election and it indicates a social divergence in Afghanistan.(Afghanistan Election and Alignment)

Afghanistan government and enforcement forces were in charge of the health of the election but Khwazoon has noted,“ We have found evidences about massive electoral offenses in the country which have been committed by the major contender, the government itself (Ashraf Ghani), and the commission should study the complaints.”

He claimed that his party has not committed any electoral offences or vote rigging because it did not need it while all people and major parties in the country had backed the Peace and Moderation team, adding that it was the rival team who resorted to vote rigging in the election and in recent days they have filled in the votes in favor of them, and Peace and Moderate team has valid documents which proves vote rigging and has handed in the evidences to the commission to take action.

We admit that the Taliban is the party who is concerned more than any other parties in the election and they dislike all the contenders but they prefer Ghani to win rather than Abdullah who is closer to Iran’s political policies. They are concerned that in case Abdullah wins the election, the cooperation between Afghan government and Iran’s Quds Commander Qasem Soleimani intensifies for eliminating the Taliban and they see their future in peril. Of course this assumption cannot be an all-out one because in the past, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran Ali Shamkhani has had several meetings with Taliban and had reiterated peace and stability in Afghanistan is pre-condition for any future cooperation with them.

 By: Hamid Reza Naghashian