Abdullah withdraws from Afghan election

Afghani opposition politician Abdullah Abdullah announces that he has withdrawn from the runoff election against President Hamid Karzai. Abdullah charged that the election process is unfair and marked by fraud. (Jerry Lampen/Reuters)

KABUL, Afghanistan — What if they gave an election and nobody came?

Afghanistan took a giant step closer to political chaos Sunday as Abdullah Abdullah, who was due to face President Hamed Karzai in a runoff election on Nov. 7, pulled out of the race, citing the failure of the government to ensure a free, fair and transparent vote.

Election experts were at a loss to predict how this would affect the runoff, or the prospects for the much-needed legitimacy the elections were supposed to confer upon Afghanistan’s beleaguered government.

Any hopes that Abdullah would go quietly were dashed as the dapper former diplomat, dressed in a smart suit and trendy shirt and tie, delivered an impassioned 35-minute speech excoriating his opponent for eight years of corruption and waste. He hammered the president and the election commission for the widespread fraud perpetrated in the first round of the election on Aug. 20, and emphasized that his decision was motivated solely by a desire to serve his country and further democracy in Afghanistan.

“I will continue my struggle to bring a bright future to Afghanistan,” he said. “But I will not participate in this election.”

Abdullah had advanced a set of demands, among them the removal of the head of the widely discredited Independent Election Commission, as a condition for his participation. Karzai refused to sack the official, Azizullah Lodin, and rejected most of Abdullah’s other stipulations as well.

Although dismissing one official would probably not have had an appreciable effect on the outcome of the vote, it would have been an important symbolic move. The president has never acknowledged the full extent of the fraud in the August poll, insisting that the elections on the whole had been clean and fair, despite some irregularities.

Abdullah’s withdrawal, although widely anticipated, threw a monkey wrench into the already creaky electoral works.

The electoral commission had spent the past several days dismissing the notion that Abdullah could upset the process by pulling out.

“If one of the candidates pulls out, his name will still remain on the ballot, and his votes would be counted,” said Daoud Ali Najafi, chairman of the election commission. “It is not allowed for a candidate to withdraw.”

But international election experts disagreed. Many had spent the past few days researching the legal ramifications of the move, since there is no provision in the law for a candidate withdrawing from a two-man contest at the last minute.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/afghanistan/091101/abdullah-withdraws-afghan-election