Kabul, October 24
Hamid Karzai clinched a majority of the votes cast in Afghanistan’s first presidential election, near-complete results showed today, leaving him all but certain of becoming this war-wrecked nation’s first democratically elected leader.His chief rival, former Education Minister Yunus Qanooni, was willing to accept the election result, but only if irregularities in the vote were acknowledged by a panel of foreign investigators.
“For the national interest and so the country does not go into crisis, we will respect the result of the election”, said Syed Hamid Noori, spokesman for Qanooni.
“But we also want the fraud to be made clear”.
By this evening, Karzai had received 4,240,041 votes, more than half of the estimated 8,129,935 valid votes cast in the October 9 ballot, the joint UN-Afghan electoral board said. That means that even if all remaining estimated votes went to other candidates, he would still get more than the 50 per cent necessary to avoid a runoff.
With 7,666,529 valid votes or 94.3 per cent of the total counted, Karzai had received 55.3 per cent, 39 percentage points ahead of Qanooni.
Karzai’s campaign spokesman said today’s figures confirmed optimism that the interim leader would triumph when the final results are released in the next few days.
“I’m going to see his excellency this evening to see when to start the celebrations”, Hamed Elmi said. “We were up against 17 candidates, but the people were behind us. We will sleep soundly tonight”.
— AP
