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Election officials deliver Afghan runoff ballots

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-10-23 01:49

Election workers transport ballot boxes on a trolley at the Independent Election Commission warehouse in Kabul October 22, 2009. [Agencies]

KABUL: Election authorities began delivering ballots with UN assistance across Afghanistan on Thursday, as hurried preparations for the November 7 runoff in the insurgency-plagued nation's presidential election got under way.

International election monitors called on authorities to avert the widespread fraud that marred the first round of voting in August. Scores of election staff accused of misconduct have been axed, and new personnel need to be hired.

President Hamid Karzai will face former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah in the runoff. Abdullah announced Wednesday that he was ready to take part, a day after Karzai bowed to intense US pressure and acknowledged he fell short of the 50 percent threshold needed for victory in the August 20 election. UN-backed auditors threw out nearly a third of Karzai's votes because of fraud.

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In Washington, US officials said a power-sharing arrangement between Karzai and Abdullah to avoid a runoff was still possible, although it would be up to the Afghans.

Organizing the ballot in a little more than two weeks poses a huge challenge. The preparations come amid a growing Taliban insurgency and ahead of mountainous Afghanistan's winter snows, which begin in much of the country around the middle of November.

UN planes were providing logistic support to the country's Independent Election Commission, flying ballots and voting kits to provincial capitals, from where they will be delivered by electoral officials to thousands of polling stations by truck, helicopter and donkey, UN spokesman Dan McNorton said.

The IEC, the body that runs the elections, is dominated by Karzai supporters. It is under huge pressure to avoid a repeat of the massive fraud that marred the first voting, which discredited the government and threatened to undermine public support for the war in the United States and European countries that provide most of the 100,000 NATO-led troops serving in Afghanistan.

The Washington, D.C.-based International Republican Institute said that insecurity, ballot-box stuffing and the misuse of state resources for campaigning must be addressed in order for the poll to be credible. The US desperately wants a government that is legitimate in the eyes of Afghans and the international community.

Another major US-based monitor, the National Democratic Institute, said more Afghan police and army troops would be needed this time around. The group said that to eliminate so-called "ghost" polling stations, no ballots should be sent to polling centers that are not secured by Afghan security forces and adequately staffed by the IEC.

It also said "polling centers that experienced fraud during the August 20 election should receive targeted IEC scrutiny on election day and during the counting process."

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