WASHINGTON – Through Skype on Friday, Afghan presidential candidate Ashraf Ghani celebrated the trust Afghan people displayed in the democratic process during the first round of voting in April.
Polls show, however, that fewer than one in five Afghans felt confident in the integrity of their country’s elections.
“What I’d like to do – like you – is to congratulate the people of Afghanistan for proving that democracy can be seen as the system that allows us to solve our problems through democratic give-and-take,” Ghani said at an event sponsored by the Atlantic Council, a nonpartisan think tank on global affairs based in Washington.
“Because of this trust in the democratic process … extremist forms of the left and the right are being isolated,” Ghani, a former finance minister under President Hamid Karzai, continued.
His remarks are in stark contrast with Gallup polls released in April. Only 18 percent of Afghans expressed confidence in their country’s democratic process, a precipitous drop from 2009, when Gallup results reported 34 percent of Afghan voters felt confident that their elections weren’t marred by fraud or corruption.
Ghani is pitted in a June 14 run-off election for the presidential seat with Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister. The results of that race will be announced June 22, and the winner will be inaugurated 30 days after that, according to Afghan election law.
In the first round of voting, Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission said that Abdullah received 45 percent of the vote, handily defeating his opponents – including Ghani, who it said came in a clear second, winning 32 percent of the vote. Abdullah failed to reach the 51 percent margin required under Afghan law to win an election outright, setting the stage for the second-round runoff. Only the top two vote getters from round one are eligible in the June 14 election.
Ghani indicated Friday that significant reports of fraud mean the first-round deficit between he and Abdullah is misleading, that it’s possible he’s not too far behind at all. The electoral commission, he said, had fired between 3,000 and 5,000 employees for alleged violations.
In an interview with NPR last week, Abdullah said that electoral officials failed to do enough to stop fraud and to examine complaints of ballot stuffing.
“The only thing that prevents any possibility of any crisis is to make sure that the process works – the process is transparent and fair,” he said. “The outcome? It’s important. But the process is more important than the outcome.”
Though both men have said they will accept a transparent outcome of the election, concern surrounding the election has sparked Taliban violence. Attacks from Taliban insurgents were fewer than expected during the first round of elections. But that was during the spring, before the Taliban fighting season.
Reuters reported Monday that the number of weekly Taliban attacks rose by around 10 percent to more than 350 incidents – including suicide attacks, gun-battles and roadside bombs – in the final week of May, citing a Western security firm.
The violence and impending election received increased attention last week in the U.S., when President Barack Obama announced that the U.S. would leave just under 10,000 troops in Afghanistan after this year. And, he said, the U.S. would pull out nearly all of the remaining troops by the end of 2016.
Crucially, troop levels depend on the signing of the Bilateral Security Agreement, which would provide a framework for Afghan security and training. The deal was negotiated with Karzai, but he refused to sign it, leaving the deal to be finalized by his successor. Both Abdullah and Ghani have pledged to sign the BSA.
On Friday, Ghani praised Karzai for allowing the country’s first democratic transition of power to be possible. It’s the first time in 5,000 years of Afghanistan’s history a leader has willingly ceded power.
