Abdullah pulls out of Afghan runoff

[unhappycamper]

Afghanistan's presidential challenger Abdullah Abdullah is seen after announcing his decision not to participate in Afghanistan's run-off election during a press conference in Kabul, Afghanistan.


Abdullah pulls out of Afghan runoff
By Dianna Cahn, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Monday, November 2, 2009

KABUL— Abdullah Abdullah, the chief rival to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, said Sunday he was withdrawing from the presidential runoff scheduled for Saturday because he did not believe free and fair elections were possible.

Abdullah said the widespread fraud in the Aug. 20 presidential election had marred the process and he did not believe the situation had improved.

"The first election was full of fraud and the Electoral Complaint Commission just threw out a small amount of the fraudulent votes, not all of them," Abdullah said in Dari at a morning news conference. He was referring to the United Nations-backed commission that threw out close to a million Karzai votes as forgeries, reducing Karzai’s showing to 48 percent versus Abdullah’s 27 percent and forcing a runoff.

"I’ve always wanted a stable Afghanistan, a peaceful Afghanistan and also I wanted the election to be clean fair and clear," Abdullah said. "But it wasn’t what I’d hoped. I don’t think it is a good idea to participate in the election because it will be just like the previous one."

Abdullah’s decision undermined hopes of western leaders that a runoff election could restore legitimacy to the Afghan presidency, which had been badly marred by the acknowledgement of ballot-stuffing and voter fraud in the Aug. 20 vote.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=65798

[asjr]

1. And still, we stay there.