INDEPTH: AFGHANISTAN
Afghanistan's presidential election
CBC News Online | October 12, 2004
Afghanistan held its first presidential election after the country's Taliban leaders were ousted by the U.S. military.
A man gives his name to get his voter registration card as a group of elegible men wait to receive thier ID registration cards at a mosque in Kabul, to take part in the presidential election on Sunday, Aug.15, 2004. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)
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When:
The elections were originally scheduled for June, then delayed until September, then delayed again to Oct. 9, 2004. If none of the candidates wins a majority of the votes on the first ballot, a run-off vote with the top two candidates will be held two weeks later. Because of lengthy vote-counting procedures and the possibility of a second ballot, the winner of the election may not be determined until November 2004. Elections for the Afghan parliament, originally to take place at the same time as the presidential vote, will take place in April or May 2005.
Who voted:
All Afghans 18 years of age and older are eligible to vote. On Aug. 18, 2004, UN officials said they had registered nearly 10 million voters in the country. Since no census of Afghanistan has ever been taken, there's no way to know how many eligible voters there are. Nearly 42 per cent of the newly registered voters are women, but that figure drops to less than 10 per cent in some provinces in the southeast. Women make up two-thirds of the Afghan population. On Oct. 4, 2004, organizers completed registration of 740,000 Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Nearly 600,000 people are eligible to vote in Iran.
The UN called the election turnout "massive," but didn't immediately have any firm numbers. Estimates ranged from five million to seven million voters.
Who ran:
Interim President Hamid Karzai is facing 17 challengers for the presidency. Two of the leading candidates are Yunus Qanuni, Karzai's education minister, and Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, a leader in the Uzbek community. Early in the campaign, the challengers accused Karzai of using government resources to gain an unfair advantage in the campaign and asked him to resign. They threatened to boycott the election if he did not.
Canadian connection:
Elections Canada helped to set up the Afghan voting system and the elections ballots were printed in Canada.
Violence and disruptions:
Although the voting day itself was relatively peaceful, owing perhaps to the 100,000 Afghan and foreign troops providing security at the polls, the weeks leading up to the election were marked by violence. Nearly 1,000 people, including 30 U.S. troops, were reported killed by Associated Press in 2004 before the election. The actual number is thought to be much higher because killings in remote areas of the country are not reported.
Among the reported incidents:
On June 26, 2004, two woman were killed and 13 other people wounded when a bomb hit a bus carrying election workers.
CBC STORY: Election workers killed in Afghanistan
On June 27, 2004, gunmen stopped a bus and killed 16 people who were carrying voter registration cards.
CBC STORY: Taliban blamed for killing Afghan voters
On Sept. 16, 2004, a rocket was fired at a U.S. military helicopter carrying Hamid Karzai as it approached an airbase in Gardez in eastern Afghanistan. Karzai aborted the trip and returned to Kabul. Three suspected Taliban members were later arrested in connection to the attack.
CBC STORY: Rocket attack narrowly misses Afghan president
Potential for fraud:
Some observers have said election fraud is rampant in the voter registration process. Karzai has acknowledged that the number of people who have registered more than once could range from 1,000 to 100,000. Human Rights Watch, a New York-based watchdog organization, says Afghan officials have acknowledged that the number of people expected to vote could be as low as five million.
To prevent people from voting more than once (even if they have registered more than once), officials with the joint UN-Afghan electoral body said they would mark the thumb cuticle of each voter with indelible ink. But 15 of the 18 presidential candidates complained that election workers at some polls used ink that could be easily wiped off and many people voted more than once. On the afternoon of the day of the election, they called for the vote to be stopped and threatened to boycott the election results.
The UN-Afghan election committee promised a swift investigation of voting irregularities, but refused to stop the vote.
Human Rights Watch said the problem with the ink would be a huge blow to the perceived legitimacy of the election, whether or not it actually made it illegitimate.
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| QUICK FACTS: |
Capital: Kabul
Area: 647,500 km sq. (same size as Manitoba)
Population: 28,513,000 (2004)
Head of State: Hamid Karzai
Unemployment: 78%
GDP (2003): $20 billion US (est.)
Exports to Canada (2003): $618,889
Imports from Canada (2003): $9 million
Median Age: 17.5
Life expectancy at birth: 42.46
Ethnic groups: Pashtun 42%, Tajik 27%, Hazara 9%, Uzbek 9%, Aimak 4%, Turkmen 3%, Baloch 2%, other 4%
(Source: CIA World Fact Book, Government of Canada)
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