Islamic poet Abdul Latif Padran, another minor candidate, said, "Today was a very black day. Today was the occupation of Afghanistan by America through elections."
The freedom of democracy allows the United States to clandestinely back candidates of their choice, pouring enough money and power behind their potential puppet nominee to insure his election. This the United States is trying in Afghanistan, in Ukraine, was seen next door to Russia in Georgia with the election of U.S. backed now Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and will be tried in Iraq for openers. #msg-4207833
There is an obvious plan to subvert true democracies and selected leaders were not being chosen based upon character but upon their loyalty to an economic system run by the elites and dedicated to preserving their power.
"All we have now are pseudo-democracies."
-Am
Afghan Opposition Alleges Election Fraud
Islamic poet Abdul Latif Padran, another minor candidate, said, "Today was a very black day. Today was the occupation of Afghanistan by America through elections."
Updated 2:28 PM ET October 9, 2004
By PAUL HAVEN
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Afghanistan's historic presidential election turned sour Saturday when all 15 candidates opposing U.S.-backed interim President Hamid Karzai withdrew in the middle of voting, charging the government and the United Nations with fraud and incompetence.
In the end, faulty ink _ not Taliban bombs and bullets _ threatened three years of painstaking progress toward democracy. The opposition candidates claimed the ink used to mark people's thumbs rubbed off too easily, allowing for mass deception.
Electoral officials rejected opposition demands that voting be stopped at midday, saying it would rob millions of people of their first chance to directly decide their leader, and the joint U.N.-Afghan panel overseeing the election would rule later on the vote's legitimacy.
But the controversy nonetheless cast a pall over what had been a joyous day in Afghanistan. Millions of ethnically diverse Afghan voters crammed polling stations for an election aimed at bringing peace and prosperity to a country nearly ruined by more than two decades of war. Men and women voted at separate booths in keeping with this nation's conservative Islamic leanings.
Karzai _ who is widely favored to win _ said the fate of the balloting was with electoral panel, but he added that, in his view, "the election was free and fair ... it is very legitimate."
"Who is more important, these 15 candidates, or the millions of people who turned out today to vote?" Karzai said. "Both myself and all these 15 candidates should respect our people _ because in the dust and snow and rain, they waited for hours and hours to vote."
Even if the vote is ultimately validated, Karzai's ability to unite this nation, fight rampant warlordism and crush a lingering Taliban insurgency in this nation of an estimated 25 million people might be fatally compromised if his opponents refuse to accept the results and insist that his rule is illegitimate.
Taliban rebels got into a skirmish with U.S. troops that left at least 25 insurgents dead, and managed to kill three Afghan policemen accompanying ballots back to a counting center after the vote. Eight more police and two civilians died when their vehicles ran over mines.
But the rebels did not muster anything approaching the massive attack they had threatened to derail the election.
The boycott was a blow to the international community, which spent almost $200 million staging the vote. At least 12 election workers, and dozens of Afghan security forces, died in the past few months as the nation geared up for the vote.
The chaos also threatened to become part of the debate in the U.S. presidential campaign. President Bush has held Afghanistan up as an example of flourishing democracy and a precursor to elections his administration insists will move forward in January in Iraq, despite continuing violence there.
In St. Louis, the president exulted in the Afghan vote as a "marvelous thing" and said his administration should receive at least partial credit.
"Freedom is powerful," Bush told a Republican breakfast fund-raiser. "Think about a society in which young girls couldn't go to school, and their mothers were whipped in the public square, and today they're holding a presidential election."
It was a starkly different scene in Kabul, where the opposition candidates met at the house of Uzbek candidate Abdul Satar Sirat and signed a petition saying they would not recognize the vote results.
Sirat, an ex-aide to Afghanistan's last king and a minor candidate expected to poll in the low single-digits, said all 15 challengers to Karzai agreed to the boycott.
"Today's election is not a legitimate election. It should be stopped and we don't recognize the results," Sirat said. "This vote is a fraud and any government formed from it is illegitimate."
Islamic poet Abdul Latif Padran, another minor candidate, said, "Today was a very black day. Today was the occupation of Afghanistan by America through elections."
Election officials acknowledged that workers at some voting stations mistakenly swapped the permanent ink meant to mark thumbs with normal ink meant for ballots but insisted the problem was caught quickly.
"Halting the vote at this stage is unjustified and would deny these people their right to vote," said Ray Kennedy, vice chairman of the joint U.N.-Afghan electoral panel. "There have been some technical problems but overall it has been safe and orderly."
Kennedy said it could take time for the electoral body to reach a decision on the vote's legitimacy. Initial results were not expected until late Sunday or early Monday, and anything approaching a full count could take two weeks.
About 10.5 million registration cards were handed out for the election, a staggering number that U.N. and Afghan officials say was inflated by widespread double registration. Organizers had argued that the indelible ink would prevent people from voting twice.
A 13-member U.S. observer team from the bipartisan International Republican Institute described the polls as "a triumph for the Afghan people."
"It is not surprising that some of the candidates are raising the question (about the ink)," said former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Bernard Aaronson, the team's co-leader. "Perhaps some of those who don't do so well are trying to provide an excuse for why they didn't do so well."
The European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe sent observer missions as well.
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad arrived at the opposition camp to meet with Sirat, making no comment other than to say he was there "only to help."
Khalilzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Afghanistan, has been widely criticized for perceived favoritism for Karzai and is seen by many Afghans as a puppet-master. Afghans gathered outside the house joked that a resolution to the crisis was near because "the big man has arrived."
Later, the ambassador issued a statement calling the elections "a profound success." He said initial indications pointed to turnout that was "extraordinarily high."
"We recognize that some allegations remain and that there should be a process to address these allegations through a thorough and transparent investigation," Khalilzad said.
But he also warned, "For Afghanistan to win, the losers in the election should not undermine the achievement of the Afghan people."
The election was supposed to offer a stark contrast to Afghanistan's many forms of imposed rule in the past 30 years _ monarchy, Soviet occupation, warlord fiefdoms and the repressive Taliban theocracy ousted by the U.S.-led invasion following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"I am old, but this vote is not just for me. It is for my grandchildren," said Nuzko, 58, a widow who stood in line at a Kabul voting station. Like many Afghans, she uses only one name.
Two days before Americans go to the polls, there will be another presidential election that is of great importance to the United States.
The fate of democracy in the former Soviet republic of Ukraine will be at stake in its Oct. 31 vote. The choice is likely to shape whether Ukraine, a nation of 50 million people, faces West toward Europe, or back East toward its former imperial master, Russia.
The Ukrainian election campaign has been a turbulent, even ugly, affair. Hints of violence and manipulation of the results are in the air. The government-controlled media have steered coverage toward the current rulers in Kiev. And the main opposition candidate, the pro-Western former Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko, was apparently poisoned. He believes it was by the regime itself.
But the most disturbing element has been the blatant intervention of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Nothing could have been more obvious than the televised coverage recently of an ostensibly private celebration of Putin's birthday at his residence outside Moscow. Putin kissed the current Ukrainian president and his anointed successor, declaring: ``Russia is not indifferent to the choice that the people of Ukraine will make . . . The future of relations depends on how Ukraine's leadership will build its policy toward Russia.''
Russia's choice, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, returned the favor, reaffirming that he will reverse Ukraine's current course toward eventual membership in the NATO alliance.
Moscow is worried that reformist opposition leader Yushchenko would move Ukraine more rapidly toward both NATO and toward membership in the European Union. But Yushchenko is a pragmatist, and he knows that neighboring Russia is Ukraine's largest trading partner. Despite the depiction of him by the Russian media as an extremist Ukrainian nationalist, he will try to keep good ties with Russia.
Moscow has a larger goal in mind: close economic integration among the core of the old Soviet Union, namely Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
Moscow's current geopolitical thinking has moved away from an earlier emphasis on integration with Europe. Now the Kremlin envisions ``two Europes'' -- the EU and a Russian-led ``Euro-East.''
``Russia still values its status as a European country, especially if it can cast itself as a leader of the `other Europe,' '' Igor Torbakov, a Moscow-educated Ukrainian scholar and journalist, told me.
Beyond economics, Ukraine occupies a special place in the minds of Russians. For them, it is still Rus, the birthplace of Russian civilization and culture. ``Without Ukraine, there can be no Russian empire,'' said Torbakov.
The current Ukrainian government is a comfortable fit with Putin's Russia -- it too is dominated by big business oligarchs and government bureaucrats, bound in a web of deep corruption. As in Russia, the government controls all the national TV channels and most of the print media. It relies heavily on support from the Russian-speaking eastern part of Ukraine and the coal and steel belt in the south.
Unfortunately for Moscow, as indicated by polls, Ukrainians are not taking the hint. Polls give the pro-Western reformer a clear lead. That has increased fears that there will be an attempt to rig the vote. Those concerns were underlined when Yushchenko spent weeks in an Austrian hospital, partly paralyzed, from the effects of some kind of poisoning. The government tried to brush this off as a case of food or alcohol poisoning -- but former KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin told me that such weapons have long existed in the arsenal of the former Soviet secret services.
The West and the United States need to wake up to the critical nature of the Ukrainian election. Unfortunately, the White House seems happy just to praise the current regime in Ukraine for sending 1,650 troops to Iraq.
The United States needs to make clear that Ukrainian democracy is a vital interest. Large numbers of international observers should be present for the vote, and exit polls should be taken to try to block a fix. And we need to be thinking what to do should Ukrainians take to the streets if their rights are denied.
DANIEL SNEIDER is foreign affairs columnist for the Mercury News. His column appears on Sunday and Thursday. You can contact him at dsneider@mercurynews.com
Pro-Russian Eastern Ukraine Threatens to Secede if Yushchenko Wins Created: 26.11.2004 19:07 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 19:07 MSK, 7 hours 15 minutes ago
MosNews
Deputies from Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine, where the disputed winner of the country’s presidential poll Viktor Yushchenko gained much of his votes, have threatened to call a referendum on the formation of an autonomous republic if opposition protestors favoring pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko get their way.
Donetsk deputies pledged to form an “East-South” autonomous republic, along with the Crimea region, which already enjoys more powers than Ukraine’s 26 other regions, Reuters reported.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters are still in the streets across central and western Ukraine denouncing the official count which shows Yanukovich as the winner of last Sunday’s presidential election.
“If they don’t clear people out of Kiev squares on Saturday and Sunday, we should, in an orderly, constitutional way, stage a referendum of trust to determine this country’s make-up,” Donetsk Mayor Alexander Lukyanchenko told the assembly.
“We can live without that half (of the country), but can they live without us?” the mayor in this primarily industrial region was quoted by Reuters as saying.
The east, which generates much of Ukraine’s wealth with its coal, chemical and steel industries, has rejected opposition calls for a nationwide strike. Crimea, which already has its own parliament and government, is also Russian-speaking and for a time in the 1990s protested against rule by Ukrainian authorities.
The disputed election has highlighted Ukraine’s centuries-old divide between the Russian-speaking east and the Ukrainian-speaking west.
Ukraine’s constitution only allows for nation-wide referendums. To stage a referendum three million signatures are needed in two-thirds of the country of 47 million. Each region has to provide at least 100,000 signatures.
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