Surprising news out of Afghanistan-no major attacks or anything like that on polling places, but it does look as if we have controversy. It turns out that poll workers used hte wrong kind of ink according to a Washington Times article. The fifteen candidates pulled out of hte race as voting occured and had this to say:


Washington Post article (registration required)

Questions for debate:

1.)In light of the fifteen candidates alleging the election is a fraud, have the Afghan elections now become marred?(wording taken from the Times, not the Post )

2.)Will the election convince Afghans to stick together no matter who wins, or will the election accusations just increase any fault lines between Afghan tribal and ethnic groups?

3.)Do the other candidates have a bad case of "sour grapes" or do all fifteen who agree, have somewhat of a valid point?

It seems a shame that the nation of Afghanistan must begin its new democratic history with their own version of Florida-2000, but considering the alternative this election has been an enormous success.


Afghan vote boycott 'crumbling'
I will of course wait for the investigation to be complete, but up to now it seems the use of the wrong ink was a simple mistake that did not favor any particular candidate.

The Afghans, by and large, seem quite happy with the results.
Reporters' log - Afghan vote

Those who feel Karzai was "selected" using these incidents need to come up with some proof.

This elections has proven the nay-sayers on Afghanistan's future dead wrong on at least one point. This Muslim nation can and did have free and fair elections.

Congratulations to the people of Afghanistan for stickin it to the Taliban and choosing to go out their and vote.

I think this was a silly mistake made by, as the article indicated, inexpierenced poll attendants. This boycott is silly as well because it looks like its aimed at Karzai and I wanna see the reaction on the other candidates faces when Karzai loses and someone else, who was apart of the boycott, wins. But as Turnea pointed out, this seems to be a effort in futility anyhow.

One down, one to go.

Considering the history of politics in Afghanistan, with years of warring factions, puppet governments, repressive regimes and outright civil war, private kingdoms of the heroin warlords, etc... it is really no surprise that there would be contention over their first attempt at free elections after all of their previous problems. In a place like that, democracy will take a lot of practice before they finally get it right. But, still, where are the people who planned, coordinated and bank-rolled 9/11? Why do we have only one division looking for them there?

That doesn't really have to do with the focus of this thread. I think it would be rather hard to make a case that we have stopped looking for Bin Laden et al. as strongly as we should, perhaps only one division is necessary because they do have a pretty-good idea of where he is (on a stretch of border land).

Either way another thread would be the place to discuss it.

What gets me now is that three people have claimed in the poll that Karzai was selected (as opposed to elected) and not one has provided any evidence...

Monitors say Afghan poll fair despite ink fiasco
That goes for the US as well as Afghanistan

1. Yes, they have become marred, but a marred democratic election is better than no election at all, IMO. I would reserve judgement on election rigging until the international electoral observers make their report, rather than base a view on the opinions of the warlords who lost.

However, I do wonder why we set quite so much store on the elections in Afghanistan, when no elections that have taken place in our "ally", Pakistan, since Musharraf took power in a military coup, from a democratically elected leadership. No matter how corrupt, anti-Western, or Islamist they may have been, they were elected in elections that were, at the time, deemed free & fair. Especially since bin Laden and the rump of the al Quaeda command are rumoured not to be in Afghanistan at all, but in the remote mountains of Pakistan.

And no real elections have ever taken place in another "ally", Saudi Arabia, where the bulk of the 9-11 hijackers came from. Even Saddam could bother to put on a rigged poll to rubber stamp his dictatorship - which is more than the House of Saud have ever done.

2. Neither - I don't think Afghanistan is gogin to become one big happy family for the foreseeable future, but neither do I think this election will particularly cause more division. Realistically, allied forces will be needed in country for all of Kharzai's first term, so I think things will stagger on much as they have done, with most of the progress towards real democracy creeping along like a glacier (but being just as irrevocable - today the first women to attend university since the fall of the Taliban started their courses).
Then when the next elections come around, it will be a second chance to get them right, and also the habits of Afghan democracy will start to be felt - so they (and we) will start to see whether they will have multi-factional, tribally-based parties and coalition governments (the logical outcome of so many parties), or whether the tribal groupings will coalesce politically into two or three main parties with recognisable platforms, etc.
Ultimately, I think either of these scenarios would be preferable to an effective one-party state, as the recently-emerged democracy of South Africa has become, for example. (I hope it never happens, and it doesn't seem likely today, but it's not too far from today's ANC dominance to tomorrow's Zimbabwe-style President for life. Remember, Mugabe was elected to power originally.)

3. Hard to say. I will be interested to see what international observers who monitor elections for a living have to say.

1.)In light of the fifteen candidates alleging the election is a fraud, have the Afghan elections now become marred?(wording taken from the Times, not the Post )

I think I will take the observations of the observers over those of the (losing) contenders.



and

We need to wait for their final evaluation, but unless some deliberate tampering was involved, I don't think we should throw out the results of the election.

2.)Will the election convince Afghans to stick together no matter who wins, or will the election accusations just increase any fault lines between Afghan tribal and ethnic groups?
The Afghan voters seem happy. I would suspect major problems if the wrong candidate wins. Of course, an election along will not "convince Afghans to stick together". They need to learn to trust other groups and in turn, not oppress other groups.

3.)Do the other candidates have a bad case of "sour grapes" or do all fifteen who agree, have somewhat of a valid point?
I would say, at this point, "sour grapes". There is no evidence of deliberate tampering. Workers (from the losing candidates) did not complain of anything unfair, just unfortunate.

Is is the nature of things in our imperfect world that whenever there is a success to point to there will be many more failures to lament.

The only likely way we'll be seeing true elections in Saudi Arabia any time soon is to go to war with them as well. Of course that would not go over well with the international (or domestic) community.

...but the problems in these other nations in no way overshadow the amazing thing that has taken place in Afghanistan.

An update:

Qanuni Says Candidates to Accept Afghan Election

Oh

and we're now up to seven people who have chosen number two in the poll, I beginning to wonder if the reason we are receiving no evidence to back up that position is because there isn't any.

Edited to Add:
It seems this crisis has finally diead a quiet death...
Afghan Poll Crisis Subsides as Karzai Rivals Back Off

More news that's sure to get the conspiracy theorists a bit embarrassed;

Afghans Count Votes 5 Days After Election
I think the enormity of this success is something that is not fully appreciated in this country.

... those skeptical of supposed plans to institute "democracy at gunpoint" should perhaps reconsider.

I suppose you're right, turnea, especially with the AD poll results being 7, 7, and 8 respectively

• The other candidates were just jealous, voting is a success [ 7 ]
• The other candidates have justified fears, Karzai was selected [ 7 ]
• Voter irregularity that occured was unintentional, get over it [ 8 ]

But the proof will be how long the government lasts without having America to prop it up. If it turns out that the government doesn't have "legs" of its own, would it be fair to say that imposed democracy doesn't work?

Call me dense, but I don't exactly see what you're getting at here. The biggest thing these results signify to me is that seven out of twenty-two respondents to the poll chose option two and not one of them has come up with a drop of evidence.

The shock of that is something my mind can't seem to se past at the moment.

The other options are just different ways of saying the voting was largely a success.

Logically?
Not really, the case that "imposed democracy" is a policy doomed to failure requires only one counter-example.

The opposing position is less definite, that democracy can be facilitated by the forceful removal of an anti-democratic regime by foreign power, requires only one example and withstands numerous counter-examples since it espouses only the possibility of a positive outcome.

Fortunately, I don't think we will have a counter-example in Afghanistan.
Edited to Add:
For those interested in following election results as they come in...
Afghanistan Presidential Election Results

Mr. Karzai currently has almost 4 times the number of votes as his nearest competitor. Unless the voting irregularities were widespread and aggregious, I think it is safe to say that Karzai won decidedly and that any irregularities played little effect in the final result.

Looks like that was a pretty safe assumption.

Early results show Karzai victory

I suspect that if there were any proof of some plot to install Karzai at least some of it would have surfaced by now.