Karzai's rival: I'll boycott run-off election

Published on Saturday 31 October 2009 18:46

ABDULLAH Abdullah, the chief rival to Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, plans to announce today his decision to withdraw from the 7 November runoff election, handing a new five-year term to Karzai but potentially damaging the government's credibility.

But Abdullah seemed to be keeping his options open until the last second, as he has done through the Afghan political crisis.

Officials close to him, speaking on condition of anonymity yesterday, said he was still trying to decide whether to publicly denounce Karzai, whom he has accused of stealing the 20 August election, or to step down without a fight.

American and other Western diplomats said they were worried that a defiant statement by Abdullah could lead to violence and undermine Karzai's legitimacy, and they were urging him to bow out gracefully.

Supporters close to Abdullah said that his representative met with Karzai yesterday but that they were unable to make any progress on the issue that has brought the two campaigns to loggerheads.

Abdullah is demanding that the Afghan election system be overhauled to head off more fraud in the second round. After the first round of voting, a United Nations-backed panel threw out nearly a million of Karzai's ballots – one-third of his total – on the grounds that they were fake.

"Abdullah is not going to participate in the election, full stop," said an Afghan close to the contender. "He is still trying to figure out what he wants to say."

His campaign announced last night that Abdullah would make a formal statement this morning – seemingly leaving extra hours for negotiation.

If Abdullah pulls out, there would still be the question of the runoff vote itself. Afghan officials said it seemed likely that it would simply be cancelled. The possibility of Taleban violence alone would appear to render pointless another Afghan election where the winner is known in advance.

Salih Muhammed Registani, one of Abdullah's campaign managers, said he thought that Abdullah would "boycott" the election and, if he did, force its cancellation.

"If they hold the election with just one candidate it would be like the former Soviet Union," he said.

The election deadlock, now in its ninth week, has highlighted the Afghan state's fragility, as well as showing deep and growing divisions among Afghans.

And it has, like so many other recent events here, posed an increasing problem for American and other Western leaders, who have found themselves stuck with a leader who has lost the support of large numbers of Afghans and whose government is widely regarded as corrupt.

An Obama administration official said yesterday that the White House had not spoken to Abdullah and that it had no immediate plans to do so. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, travelling in Abu Dhabi, gave the administration's only comment.

"We see that happen in our own country where, for whatever combination of reasons, one of the candidates decides not to go forward," she said.

"I don't think it has anything to do with the legitimacy of the election. It's a personal choice which may or may not be made."

The concern among diplomats yesterday was that Abdullah would denounce Karzai even as he bowed out of the race, possibly causing greater anger, and even violence, among his followers. American and Western diplomats were leaning on Abdullah to pull out with little rancour and to urge his supporters to accept the fact that Karzai would be president.

Karzai's supporters are hoping he will, too. Over the past month, as the evidence of vote stealing piled up, Karzai's ministers carried on with extraordinary self-confidence, portraying the fraud, and the runoff itself, as a nuisance that, once overcome, would allow them to get on with their jobs.

"Either he will do it gracefully or not," Hanif Atmar, the interior minister said, referring to Abdullah. Atmar is a supporter of Karzai and Abdullah has accused him of helping to orchestrate much of the fraud.

Against this backdrop of bargaining and diplomatic activity, Karzai stayed silent publicly.

Only last week, Karzai succumbed to pressure from American and other Western officials, agreeing to accept the verdict of a United Nations-backed commission that put his vote total at under 50 per cent.

While Abdullah's campaign team has opened offices in many provinces, they have been waiting to start campaigning until they find out if their conditions are met.

But Abdullah concluded that without major changes to the election system, a second round would be as fraudulent as the first.

His demands included the firing of Azizullah Lodin, chief of the Independent Electoral Commission, which collected and counted the ballots, and the closing of hundreds of suspected "ghost" polling centres – fictional voting sites that were instrumental in allowing Karzai's supporters to manufacture fake ballots.

Lodin has denied allegations of bias in favour of Karzai, and the election commission's spokesman has already said Lodin cannot be replaced by either side.

Nor surprisingly Karzai refused the sacking request and Abdullah, it seems, is not relenting.

"All the infrastructure that caused the elections to be flawed and wrecked are still there," said Ahmed Wali Massoud, an Abdullah adviser. "I don't know how anyone can go to an election with these conditions."

Those close to Karzai said the explanation was simpler.

Abdullah is a 49-year-old doctor turned politician. He is half-Pashtun and half-Tajik, giving him wide appeal across Afghanistan's ethnic and tribal divide.

But even with this support Muhammad Ismail Yoon, a university professor close to Karzai, said that Abdullah knew that if he went through with a second round, the Afghans would desert him. "No one invests in a loser in Afghanistan," he said.

The Taleban, who threatened voters during the August ballot, warned Afghans that they risk further attacks. On Wednesday they targeted a United Nations guest house where 34 staff – including a number of UN election workers – were sleeping.

Eight were killed in the assault, five of them UN staff members.