DON'T STEAL THE ELECTION NOW

D Suba Chandran


Within a span of two months, there has been an
unfortunate turn around to the electoral and thereby the larger democratic process in Afghanistan. After a successful first round of elections in April 2014, the second round took place during the last month to elect either Abdullah Abdullah or Ashraf Ghani.
What should have been a simple and straight
forward election between two candidates has today become a highly divisive one, threatening the positive achievements in the recent years towards establishing Afghanistan as a democracy.
Trouble started much before the counting process
began. Abdullah Abdullah complained about fraud
in the second round of election, with ballot boxes
being stuffed in more than 2000 polling booths.
What was surprising also was the number of votes
polled in the second round of elections, when
compared with the first round.
While the first round witnessed polling of six
million votes, the initial count after elections
projected seven million, while the final number after
counting rose to eight million. The independent
Election Commission has announced that Ashraf
Ghani scoring more than 54 percent of the votes
polled, while Abdullah Abdullah securing less than
45 percent.
Abdullah group consider this as a huge fraud and
believe that the two million votes should be bogus
and stuffed to ensure Ashraf Ghani wins the
process. His supporters also provide as proof
telephonic conversations of the election
commission officials on the issue of fraud and
attempting to steal the election in favour of Ashraf
Ghani.
With the other two candidates – Zalmai Rassoul
and Abdul Sayyaf who have secured 11 and 7
percent of votes during the previous round,
supporting Abdullah Abdullah, the latter was
expecting his vote share would increase from 45
percent in the previous round to more than 50
percent during the second round. However, Ashraf
Ghani who had scored less that Abdullah in the
first round was declared securing more than 50
percent, which the Abdullah group has refused to
accept.
Having gone through the same process earlier
while fighting Hamid Karzai, Abdullah Abdullah do
not want to lose one more time due to fraud and is
unlikely to wait till the next Presidential elections.
His supporters are vociferous and are pressurizing
Abdullah to form a government immediately on his
own. His group wants to go to the Presidential
palace and occupy it, thereby forming the
government. Abdullah does have support amongst
few Governors in the provinces and also amongst a
section within the Afghan security forces. His
threat is doable from his side.
It would have been a disaster had he carried out
the threat. Thankfully, he allowed Kerry to mediate
in finding a solution. After a marathon of meetings
between Abdullah and Ghani, Kerry did succeed in
establishing a deal; both had agreed to an audit
again, thereby counting the votes.
How did the electoral process, after the initial
success come to this stage? Was there really turn
around between the two rounds, which made Ashraf
Ghani take a decisive lead in a period of two
months? Or, was there something sinister behind
the entire disaster.
A section does accuse Hamid Karzai, the President
now for playing a dirty role in favouring Ashraf
Ghani. The latter being a pashtun is a factor cited
as Karzai’s decision to steal the election against
Abdullah Abdullah. When compared to Ashraf
Ghani, Abdullah Abdullah is not seen as an outside;
he has remained within Afghanistan, fought the
Soviet troops earlier as a part of the Mujahideen
resistance, and latter the Taliban. He continued to
support the political process after Karzai was made
the President during the last decade. Ashraf Ghani
is seen as an outside and technocrat, who was
imported from the West. So Abdullah group does
have a point.
Second, there is also a conspiracy theory accusing
Karzai as the primary villain trying deliberately to
create political instability. If there is a political
standoff between the two candidates, he is likely to
remain the President for a longer term; or, given
his support to Ashraf Ghani, the later would return
the favour and accommodate Karzai in one way or
another. This section also claims, without such a
long term plan for himself, he would not have
attempted to build such a huge palace in Kabul
after passing over the baton to the next President.
The US was alarmed with such a situation for three
reasons. First, Karzai continuing as the President
in the event of political instability mean that the
Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) would not be
signed between Afghanistan and the US. The other
two candidates have agreed to sign, if they get
elected. Second, the US is also equally worried
about any political instability at this juncture, with
the American forces preparing their exit plan.
The most important worry for the US is any repeat
of Iraq situation. A section within the US has
already started writing that today’s Iraq is
tomorrow’s Afghanistan, hinting that what is
happening within Iraq would happen to
Afghanistan. An unstable government, non-
inclusive politics, pull-out of foreign troops and
radical onslaught – the recipe for disaster today in
Iraq would very well become the ingredients of
failure in Afghanistan tomorrow.
The US at this juncture does not want one more
unstable country in this region. If there is instability
in Kabul, the political process would remain
paralysed. Attracting foreign investment, which is
crucial to the stability and the very survival of
Afghanistan, would then become a tougher issue.
More than the political paralysis and economic
failure, Afghanistan is likely to become politically
polarised along pashtun and non-pashtun lines, if
the above happens. This will also puncture the
Afghan dream that the youth in particular believes
in terms of establishing an Afghan nation based on
a larger identity cutting across narrow ethnic and
tribal identities. The political instability would let
the Afghan youth down and hit them hard, than any
other sections of the society.
So, who will benefit out of the above
developments? Obviously, without firing a single
bullet and planning an ambush, Taliban would gain
considerably and in fact would cover the lost
ground in no time. Taliban, though weakened when
compared to the last decade, still have enough fire
power to wreck the process, especially in a
politically unstable situation. Taliban would bounce
back, not because of inherent strength, but
because of the failure of mainstream political
process and political consensus.
For the rest of the region, any Taliban ingress in
Afghanistan now leading towards an establishment of any form of government, even over a limited territory would imply two fanatic regimes in Iraq in the west and in Afghanistan in the east, forming a radical corridor. Such a development would neither be in the interest of Afghanistan, or in the rest of Asia. West Asia, South Asia, Central Asia and even parts of Western China (especially Xinjiang) would
face the reverberations of such a development.
It is imperative that the two Presidential candidates in Afghanistan get back to the political process and ensure that the audit takes place, thus increasing the credibility of the electoral process and infusing faith in the political path.