Afghanistan’s election authority announced final results for two of the country’s 34 provinces yesterday as hundreds of protesters blocked roads in two key cities alleging fraud in the count. Results from the Sept. 18 legislative elections had been finalized for Nimroz and Farah provinces, an official said, with others expected to be completed by the month’s end. The results confirmed a seat in the new Parliament for firebrand activist Malalai Joya, from Farah, who rose to prominence in conservative Afghanistan when she dared to criticize a feared warlord in a public meeting two years ago.The elections for the Parliament and provincial councils were the first in the battered country in more than three decades and a key step in a transition to democracy mapped out after the hard-line Taleban regime was removed in late 2001. Joint Election Management Body (JEMB) chief of operations Richard Atwood told reporters the count had taken longer than anticipated mainly because of the time it took to investigate allegations of fraud. Most allegations could not be substantiated and the fraud that had been uncovered was not systematic or widespread, he said.
Nonetheless votes from about 680 polling stations, under three percent of the total, had been excluded from the count because of irregularities such as ballot stuffing, he said. About 50 of the hundreds of thousands of elections staff had also been sacked after allegations were made against them. Many of the complaints were from some of the more than 5,700 candidates who were clearly not going to win any of the nearly 670 seats up for grabs.