AFP

The results of Afghanistan’s disputed election will be declared today, officials said yesterday, as last-minute talks between the two rival candidates struggled to nail down a proposed power sharing deal.

The stalemate between Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah since the June 14 vote has plunged Afghanistan into a political crisis as US-led Nato troops end their 13-year war against the Taliban.

Both men claim to have won the fraud-tainted election, and the United Nations and the United States have pushed hard for a “national unity government” to try to avoid a return to the ethnic divisions of the 1990s civil war.

“The IEC will officially announce the final results of the presidential election tomorrow,” Independent Election Commission spokesman Noor M  Noor said.

Mujib Rahman Rahimi, a spokesman for Abdullah, said the two candidates had not yet signed a power sharing deal.

“Most of the differences have been solved. The only one which remains is over how the election results are announced,” he said.

“The IEC is not supposed to announce the final results before the agreement is finalised. I hope they won’t do that.”

Ghani’s campaign team confirmed the deal was still not agreed late yesterday.

The election process has been plagued by delays and setbacks, and the latest timetable for results could still change unless the remaining disputes are ironed out.

Ghani — who won the vote according to preliminary results — is set to emerge as president, with Abdullah nominating who will fill the new post of “chief executive officer”, possibly
taking on the role himself.

Under the Afghan constitution the president wields almost total control, and the new government structure faces a major test in the coming years as the country’s security and economic outlook worsens.

President Hamid Karzai, whose successor was originally due to be inaugurated on August 2, was constitutionally barred from standing for a third term in office. He has stayed publicly neutral in the election.

About 41,000 Nato troops remain in Afghanistan, down from a peak of 150,000 in 2010, fighting along Afghan soldiers and police against the fierce Taliban insurgency.

Nato’s combat mission will end in December, with a follow-on force of about 12,000 troops likely to stay into 2015 on
training and support duties.

The United Nations has expressed fears that any backlash to the election result could revive the violence of the 1990s, when nationwide chaos allowed the Taliban to come to power.

After the June election was engulfed in fraud allegations, the US brokered a deal in which the two candidates agreed to abide by the outcome of an audit of all 8mn ballot papers and then form a national unity government.

But Abdullah later abandoned the audit, saying it was failing to clean out fraud.

Only 10 days ago, he insisted he had won fairly and that negotiations over the unity
government had collapsed.

 

Karzai expresses optimism

Afghan President Hamid Karzai yesterday expressed optimism over the progress in talks between the presidential runners and promised the country would soon hear “good news” about the election results.

“With the announcement of the outcome of the mid-June presidential runoff election, people’s suffering, pain and uncertainty would come to an end,” Pajhwok Afghan News quoted Karzai as saying at a ceremony in Kabul.

Karzai added that there were good days ahead for the people of Afghanistan.

“I am preoccupied with a lot of things these days. You already know what these tasks are. I’m going now to attend another meeting with jihadi leaders and candidates,” he said.

 

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