EU monitors say 1.5 million Afghan votes rigged
September 16th, 2009 - 5:00 pm ICT by IANSKabul, Sep 16 (DPA) European Union election monitors said Wednesday that up to 1.5 million votes, one quarter of all ballots, had been subject to manipulation or were suspected of having been tampered with.
Deputy mission head Dimitra Ioannou said 1.1 million of the suspect votes were in favour of incumbent President Hamid Karzai and 300,000 were cast for his main challenger, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah.
“All of them need to be investigated,” she added.
In total, 5.5 million votes were cast in the Aug 20 presidential polls. According to the latest preliminary results, Karzai leads the polls with 54.3 percent of the vote, enough to avoid a run-off.
The Independent Election Commission, which conducted the poll, is to announce its final preliminary result Wednesday evening.
EU chief election monitor Philippe Morrillon criticised the planned announcement as a mistake. The EU mission called on the IEC to refrain from announcing more results before all accusations of vote rigging have been investigated.
At this point, any claim for victory would not be credible, Morrillon argued. “We tried to deter from massive fraud. We did not succeed,” he said.
- EU monitors say 1.5 million Afghan votes rigged (Lead) - Sep 16, 2009
- Karzai gets absolute majority in Afghan poll (Lead) - Sep 17, 2009
- Karzai urges common sense after poll results, charges of fraud - Sep 17, 2009
- Top Afghan election officials, accused of vote-rigging, resign - Apr 07, 2010
- EU monitors say a third of Karzai votes are suspect - Sep 17, 2009
- Election results remain sealed in Afghanistan - Sep 12, 2009
- Karzai wins majority amid 'clear proof of fraud' - Sep 09, 2009
- Afghan poll review panel completes probe in fraud charges - Oct 19, 2009
- Karzai accepts runoff vote to be held on Nov 7 (Roundup) - Oct 20, 2009
- Karzai accepts runoff vote to be held on Nov 7 (Lead) - Oct 20, 2009
- Decision to name Karzai president had no legal basis: Abdullah - Nov 04, 2009
- Afghan election watchdog disqualifies 19 over poll fraud - Nov 22, 2010
- Karzai's challenger expected to boycott presidential run-off - Oct 31, 2009
- Afghan body to recount ballots from 10 percent polling centres - Sep 15, 2009
- Karzai hails Afghan election results (Lead) - Sep 09, 2009
Tags: abdullah abdullah, ballots, chief election, dimitra, election commission, election monitors, foreign minister, hamid karzai, incumbent president, independent election, ioannou, kabul, massive fraud, preliminary results, president hamid karzai, presidential polls, tampered, union election, vote rigging, wednesday evening