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Karzai wins 54% in Afghan vote

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-09-17 04:52

Incumbent Afghan President Hamid Karzai has obtained over 54 percent votes as the preliminary results of the Aug 20 presidential election announced Wednesday.

"Out of valid 5,662,785 votes, Mr Hamid Karzai has secured 3,093,256 votes or 54.6 percent," chief electoral officer Daud Ali Najafi told a news conference.

Karzai's main challenger Abdullah Abdullah bagged 1,571,581 votes or 27.8 percent, securing the second position. Ramazan Bashardost stood at third place by bagging 9.2 percent or 520,627 votes.

Final results of the election will be announced after reviewing all the complaints received by the Electoral Complaints Commission(ECC), Najafi added.

Some 2,800 complaints have been filed with ECC and more than 700 of them, according to officials with the body are serious that can sway the election result.

Afghanistan's second presidential election in the post-Taliban country held last month marred by allegedly widespread fraud.

Dimitra Ioannou, the deputy head of the European Union Observation Mission to Afghanistan (EU-EOM), Wednesday said that some 1.5 million of votes, nearly one quarter of all ballots, cast in the Aug. 20 presidential election are suspicious.

Related readings:  UN throws out Afghan votes from 83 sites  Karzai defends election as honest  Karzai edges closer to 50% in Afghan vote  Major fraud allegations in Afghan election top 550

Ioannou told reporters in a press conference that "EU-EOM's own findings confirm that large scale ballots stuffing took place at polling station levels."

The EU official added that among the 1.5 million votes, 1.1 million votes were cast for incumbent Hamid Karzai, 300,000 for Abdullah as well as some 92,000 for Ramazan Bashardost.

Ioannou also said that hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes were accepted at Independent Election Commission (IEC)'s tally centers among the preliminary official results posted on IEC's website.

Meanwhile, Karzai's campaign office in a statement described EU-EOM's announcement as "partial, irresponsible and in contradiction with Afghanistan's constitution."