Afghan President Hamid Karzai Takes 100% of Votes in Opposition Stronghold
By Nicole Belle Sunday Sep 06, 2009 4:00pm
Remember how the Iranian elections results made the GOP assume voter fraud and start screaming about election integrity? The world is curiously silent now, isn't it?
In the southern Afghan district of Shorabak, the tribesmen gathered shortly before last month’s presidential election to discuss which candidate they would back. After a debate they chose to endorse Abdullah Abdullah, President Hamid Karzai’s leading opponent.
The tribal leaders prepared to deliver a landslide for Abdullah – but it never happened. They claim Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president’s brother and leader of the Kandahar provincial council, detained the local governor and closed all the district’s 46 polling sites on election day.
The ballot boxes were taken back to the district headquarters where, tribal leaders allege, they were stuffed with ballots by local policemen. A total of 23,900 ballots were finally sent off to Kabul, the capital – every one of them a vote for Karzai.
The alleged fraud, which Ahmed Wali Karzai denies, was the most blatant example among hundreds of incidents that have threatened to make a mockery of the election.
The sheer scale and audacity of the cheating, which includes supposedly “state-sponsored” ballot-stuffing, vote burning, intimidation and the closure of polling stations in antigovernment areas, has overwhelmed the country’s fledgling Electoral Complaints Commission.
Its staff are battling with more than 2,600 reports of vote-rigging, including at least 650 deemed serious enough “materially” to influence the result.
“This is a blatant violation of the procedure and I think it is stealing in daylight,” Abdullah said yesterday.His aides say privately that if Karzai wins the 50.1% of votes needed for victory in the first round, they won’t accept the result. Abdullah said he intended to use all legal means to challenge any Karzai victory; his supporters talked menacingly of “Iran-style protests with Kalashnikovs”.
So this is the test: do we really care about bringing democracy to Afghanistan?
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...Unocal.
N-G-O
karzai is as crooked as a dog's hind leg. the "good" war is better for some *cough* (oil interests) than others *cough* (the people of Afghanistan) [massive understatement]
obama is ramping up the violence in Afghanistan (not to mention killing a lot of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan) and he is, in the great american tradition, helping to prop up yet another corporate-friendly 3rd world leader.
neither afghanistan war nor iraq war have anything to do with democracy, peace, or freedom. and obama flirts with making himself as hated as bush to the people affected by aerial drones, mercenaries and american troops.
Worked-out pretty well for the neocons in December, 2000.
thye'd call it a "tell," or a "tip-off" that something untoward was trying to happen...
just sayin
The GOP certainly weren't the only ones complaining about fraud during the Iranian elections. The numbers there did not add up in the slightest.
There are rigged elections and then there are rigged elections.
The question is, did they release the results BEFORE the polls closed?
We make the world safe for Feudalism over and over again.
to Afghanistan so they can have the same kind of elections we have. Stolen.
This vote fraud is so obvious its laugable. I can believe that the Karzai regime actually does this in numerous provinces but not to this magnitude. This one is so blatant that it makes Karzai look desperate. If his regime did do this then he just handed groups like the Taliban the ammunition they need to solidify and expand in their opposition. The only question now is how many new fighters will the Taliban gain from this once they play it up and how many U.S. troops and others will pay the price for Karzai's blatant attempt to hold onto power.
May not hold up, ultimately.
The possibility that the Taliban and Karzai are allies could also be so I am agreement with you there.
no way. i would eat this here hat if they were united
Just in case.
a big easter bonnet (shhh...)
If there is no possibility that Karzai and the Taliban are not united then why pull off such a blantant act of vote fraud in an opposition stronghold? Karzai may be many things but I doubt even he is foolish enough to think that a 100% vote count in his favor would not be seen as anything but a blatant act of vote fraud. He would also have to know that this would play right into the Taliban hands as well. The only possible reason for doing is out of shear desperation or he is in fact united with the Taliban to some degree.
he is a puppet of ameri-corp interests
american and corporate interests won't raise much of a stink with something as inconsequential (for them) as voter fraud when matters of huge importance (TAPI) might be jeopardized by his removal--and karzai is betting on this.
the taliban would castrate karzai
not to mention my disbelief that there is a rift btwn karzai and the US govt. nope. don't believe it.
The fact that Karzai is and is seen by many as a puppet to American interests is a given. Since no opposition has arisen from Karzai's American puppet masters over this obvious vote fraud then another possibility arises which is equally just as vile, goes well beyond Karzai but leads to the same conclusion.
Karzai's American puppet masters are deliberately using this obvious voter fraud carried out by the Karzai regime as a means to reduce Karzai's credibility and standing in the eyes of the Afgans and as a means to bring the Taliban and other opposition groups into the political process. If this is the case then Karzai's natural reaction would be to start reaching out to those opposition groups like the Taliban. In either case, the result could be the same.
his election to Kim Jong Il's in North Korea? Remember when the teeny little dictator got the same number of votes as the number of all people in his country, including infants and children? That could have been it.
Ignored even now. That held up.
Who needs the Supreme Court to swing an election.
they just stole the ballots the next time. You couldn't "prove" anything, staggering statistical improbabilities notwithstanding.
?
We won't be able to say anything to Afganistan until we come to terms with Florida and Ohio......
.
... Because nothing screams 21st Century America like rigged elections.
.
screams about South American democratic elections that are overseen and are truly democratic.
Or just hypocritical?
Holy shit! We achieved Vietnam-like results in half the time! Great learning curve here.
.
OPERATION FREEDUMB AGENDA COMPLETE.
VIALS OF DEMOCRACY DUST DISTRIBUTION CERTIFIED.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKKMdmPBWRk
Cool song!
“This was an important step forward in the Afghan people’s effort to take control of their future, even as violent extremists are trying to stand in their way,” Mr. Obama said. “I want to congratulate the Afghanistan people on carrying out this historic election.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/29/world/asia/...
i imagine that the president will want to come out with a revised statement
The TimesOnLine link is a 404 error
:(
in our own country; you think Afghanistan matters?
President Hamid Karzai was hand picked by the Bush goverment
Did you really think the higher ups in the Know wanted someone else
that couldnt be used to further their agenda?
Stop and Think
Karzai helped to provide financial and military support for the Mujahideen in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion in the 1980s
Karzai was a contact for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency
On November 4, 2001, American forces flew Karzai out of Afghanistan for protection.
In 2004 he rejected a US proposal to end poppy production in Afghanistan through aerial spraying of chemical herbicides, fearing that it would harm the economic situation of his countrymen. Moreover, Karzai's younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai -- who partially helped finance Karzai's presidential campaign -- is rumored to be involved in the heroin trade.(although Karzai's family were quite wealthy already from owning well established restaurants in the United States.)
This man is bought and payed for by the American tax payer
29,000 to 0!
Good thing that's not mathematically impossible, otherwise I would think something fishy was going on.
Like that precinct in Ohio, where Bush got 3200 votes in 2004, despite the fact only 2700 people lived there.
this look that says I'm crazy. Looks like there is at least two of us now. Is this a conspiracy?
Kinda reminds you of home, don't it?
has been saying that for a while now, she was buying ballots at the local market.
http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2009/08/18/el...
...so that Afghans can run fraudulent elections, then what's the point?
As our own elections become more and more suspect, we need allies who will follow our example and even surpass us. I wonder whose brilliant idea it was to make sure every vote was for Karzai? Really, what better way to convince people that the election was fair and honest than by having 100% of voters cast their ballots for one person. That happens all the time in real life, right?
If one of our lackeys wins - everything's cool.
If somebody in the axis of evil wins, it's fraud.
Anyway - Let's just say that there has been a wonderful triumph for democracy in Afghanistan.
So let's get the message to Obama that freedom has won and it is time to GET THE FVCK OUT OF THERE.
http://news.google.co.uk/news/story?q=afghan+...
There are 2036 articles on it right now.
Ever cared about democracy in America or Afganistan!
Greed is the only thing a republican cares about!
As long as someone else is doing the dying you will hear no objections from republicans.
republicanism is a mental illness.
It maybe worse then a mental illness.
I think it is as contagious to the ignorant as smallpox was to the indians.
"So this is the test: do we really care about bringing democracy to Afghanistan?"
Most people don't even care about democracy in America let alone Afghanistan. Even those that purport to run liberals blogs.
PUBLICLY FINANCED ELECTIONS NOW!
..............are jealous!!! They only wish they could just close down 'voting' in NOLA, or any other Democratic stronghold.
....................spreding FASCISM under the cloak of 'Democracy' GAG!
Definitely reeks, just like Florida not counting all the votes, backed by the Reslug Supreme court.
Boosh put him in office. This guy learned from Cheney and Boosh.
What else needs to be said? Other than lets just GTFO of there now.
It's obvious we're wasting not only lives, but time and money.
Fookem. Withdraw and start saving this country.
I am wondering if Karzai took a seminar with Mexico's P.R.I. For decades, according to the book Opening Mexico (a good read, by the way) the Partido Revolucionario Institutional rigged elections and stole votes by a variety of interesting methods. First, it was paper voting script handed out in abundance to party minions who were loaded onto buses, whimsically called, in Spanish, "carousels," and driven from precinct to precinct.
Then there were the magical transportations of thousands of Mayans to Chihuahua to participate in that state's regional races. When opposition forces demanded to compare the voting rolls with the votes actually placed, they found too many "Choc's" and "Poc's" on the record -- in fact many thousands. This was curious because no indigenous Mayans actually lived in Chihuahua.
Then, when rival parties demanded a computer feed so that they could even the playing field once the exclusive property of the P.R.I., the techs simply turned it off when early polls suggested victories by the P.A.N. (the party of Cuauctemoc Cardenas). The Salinas election was the worst, but at least it eventually paved the way for Fox.
Let's face it, the election in Afghanistan was rigged and rendered de facto void: none of the provinces will tow the line and we'll just be pumping more cash into the "president's" coffers, which I now understand belong to the whole family. Yet another example of our nation's disastrous foreign policy.
We should ask Afghanistan to monitor our elections.
when you've got US forces shipping the ballot boxes around, is this really a surprise? Seems the Afghans have taken well to US style democracy
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