Candidates for president in Afghanistan's first free elections to be held Oct. 9 officially kicked off their campaigns yesterday. The favorite among the 18 candidates is seen to be current President Hamid Karzai, who has been supported by the US since the US-led coalition's ouster of the radical Taliban regime in late 2001. Campaigning for the presidential election is permitted to continue until three days before the voting. Taliban remnants have vowed to step their up attacks in a bid to disrupt the election process, but no incidents were reported as official campaigning got under way yesterday.
| I'd like to see more remnants of the Taliban -- arms here, legs there, special on turbans today, 2 for 1. |
UN officials reported more than 10.5 million Afghans have registered to vote, 41.3 percent of them women, exceeding earlier estimates for the number of people expected to vote. Elections for president and parliament were originally set to be held in June, but were postponed due to organizational and security problems. The parliamentary election is scheduled to take place next April.
| That should be an adventure in good jirga... |
The October presidential vote will fall three years after the US unleashed a military assault to destroy the Taliban regime for harboring Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Voters will cast their ballots in 5,000 polling stations run by about 130,000 staff, covering areas so mountainous and remote they are only accessible by donkey or on foot and lack modern communication links. Fundamentalist fighters loyal to the ousted Taliban rulers have vowed to disrupt the polls and have been waging a bombing and guerrilla campaign, killing more than 20 people including 12 election workers since May. Despite the bloodshed, about 10.5 million people have registered to vote in the central Asian state's first-ever presidential elections -- more than the 9.8 eligible voters originally forecast by the UN.
| Thus raising charges of fraud, never mind that the UN forecast was done on the back of an envelope. |
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