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| Afghanistan |
| Massive protest over Afghan election fraud allegations |
| 2014-06-22 |
| [CBSNEWS] Over a thousand people erupted into the streets of Kabul Saturday to protest against the alleged widespread, carefully engineered fraud in Afghanistan's run-off election for president. Protesters supporting presidential candidate Dr. Abdullah Abdullah ... the former foreign minister of the Northern Alliance government, advisor to Masood, and candidate for president against Karzai. Dr. Abdullah was born in Kabul and is half Tadjik and half Pashtun... said they would not accept the result of the election. At one location, marchers were holding disfigured pictures of Zia ul Haq Amarkhel, the secretary of the Independent Election Commission (IEC), chanting "death to the fraudulent Amarkhel" and "death to the Independent Election Commission." On June 14, the day of the run-off election, Afghan police stopped Amarkhel while he was transporting ballot papers without a police escort. He was accused of fraud, by Abdullah and others, but insisted he was merely trying to rush ballot papers to several polling sites where there was a shortage. On Saturday, protesters set up tents on some major roads, blocking traffic. At one point they blocked access to the airport for over an hour. Also Saturday, a suicide boom-mobileer struck the vehicle of the High Peace Council's chief secretary, Mohammad Masoom Stanikzai, in Kabul, killing one civilian and wounding three others, Kabul police chief Gen. Muhamad Zahir Zahir said. No group grabbed credit of the attack. The political demonstrators repeated demands made by Abdullah, who has been boycotting the country's electoral commissions, and called for the immediate halt of vote-counting, saying the process is no longer legitimate. Abdullah has accused President Hamid Maybe I'll join the TalibanKarzai ... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtunface on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use... and both commissions of orchestrating the election in favor of his rival, technocrat and former World Bank official Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai. Ghani and Abdullah are facing each other in the run-off after none of the nine presidential candidates secured the minimum 50-percent-plus-1 vote threshold in the first round of the elections April 5, forcing both to compete in the second round. Abdullah accused his rival of extensive fraud in certain areas where he has a power base. The protesters were mainly Tajik and Hazara ethnicities and demonstrated in predominantly Tajik and Hazara neighborhoods. Abdullah is half-Tajik and half-Pashtun and is a prominent figure among Tajiks. "Our gathering is against the two electoral commissions and President Karzai's orchestrated and systematic interference in the election," said Abdullah Khudadad, one of organizers of the protests. "This is only the start of the nation's complaints and we would continue it until we achieve justice ... Any violence or negative consequences of these protests would be the responsibility of the Afghan government." |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 Doesn't do any good in Chicago, Washington state or Minnesota either. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2014-06-22 09:08 |