President Hamid Karzai has been officially declared Afghanistan's first-ever popularly elected president after a weeks-long fraud probe found no reason to overturn his landslide victory.
While the US-backed leader made an immediate call for unity, his closest rivals refused to concede, undermining hopes for political stability in a country racked by ethnic mistrust.
The UN-sponsored electoral board, confirming the results of the Oct. 9 vote, said Karzai had won a five-year term with 55.4 percent, 39 percentage points more than his nearest rival. It was the first national ballot since the fall of the Taliban three years ago.
"His excellency Hamid Karzai is the winner," board chairman Zakim Shah said at a ceremony on Wednesday broadcast live on Afghan state television. "We are announcing the first elected president of Afghanistan."
In Washington overnight, US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: "We congratulate President Hamid Karzai on his election as Afghanistan's first democratically elected president and we look forward to his inauguration next month."
The UK, Germany and France also wished Karzai well.
High turnout and the lack of major violence on polling day "demonstrates the scale of the transformation that has already taken place in Afghanistan in the three years since the overthrow of the Taliban," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said.
NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who bulked up the alliance's Afghan security force during the poll, said he looked forward to working with Karzai "in helping Afghanistan build a better, safer future."
The election itself was delayed from June because of insecurity and logistical problems. The result was then held up by weeks of mudslinging by Karzai's challengers, who threatened to boycott the outcome.
In its final report released on Wednesday, the panel confirmed problems with ballot stuffing and with ink used to mark people's fingers to prevent multiple voting.
But it said there was "no evidence" that the problems were widespread or that they favored only Karzai.
"There were shortcomings," Staffan Darnolf, a Swedish election expert on the panel, said at a news conference. "But they could not have materially affected the overall result."
Karzai was expected to make a victory speech in the Afghan capital yesterday.
However, his nearest rival, former Education Minister Yunus Qanooni, refused to concede defeat, raising the risk of political instability in a country slowly emerging from a quarter-century of war.
Qanooni's running mate Syed Hussein Alemi Balkhi said the report was "unacceptable" though he stopped short of saying they would reject the result.
Qanooni won 16.3 percent of the vote, ahead of Hazara chieftain Mohammed Mohaqeq with 11.7 percent.
Mohaqeq, who has vowed "never" to recognize Karzai's victory, declined to comment on Wednesday.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and
RSS