By Steve Hynd
KABUL (Reuters) � President Hamid Karzai's campaign manager claimed victory on Friday in the country's presidential election, saying preliminary results showed there would be no need for a second round run-off.
"Initial results show that the president has got a majority," Deen Mohammad told Reuters, although he said it was the duty of the election commission to announce the official results.
"We will not get to a second round. We have got a majority."
Mohammad said the estimate of victory was based on reports from nearly 29,000 monitors the campaign had at polling stations throughout the country.
... A spokesman for Karzai's chief rival, Abdullah Abdullah, dismissed the victory claim.
"It isn't true," said Fazl Sangcharaki. "We also say, 'Maybe we don't need a second round and Abdullah has won.'"
Everybody has learned lessons from the Iran electoral fiasco. Claim victory loud and early and your supporters will never believe the other guy won fairly, or even came a closer second than you say he did.
Also unsurprising is the Obama administration's spin:
"We had what appears to be a successful election in Afghanistan, despite the Taliban's efforts to disrupt it," U.S. President Barack Obama said from the White House.
If you define success as SNAFU, that's a true statement. But here's the killer:
Official results had not been expected for a couple of weeks, but the Afghan Election Commission confirmed on Friday that ballot counting was over for the presidential election in all parts of the country.
One election commission official, Zekria Barakzai, told the AFP that he expected the official results to be announced next week.
"The turnout was different from south to the north and central parts of Afghanistan but still it is satisfactory and I expect that turnout will be from 40 to 50%," he said.
A count that was expected to last a week, with ballots delivered to many rural polling stations by over 3,000 donkeys, is actually over in a day? Pull the other one.
So the official vote will come in, both sides will claim fraud and the nation will have to look to the real Decider - President Obama - to ensure that they guy who officially won, despite widespread fraud from everyone, gets to be the figurehead president. Hell, it's sounding just like Iran again, with Obama in the role of the Grand Ayatollah!
The Taliban shouldn't have bothered disrupting the election - their rivals will do a fine job of making the aftermath as divisive as possible without their involvement being required. Just like Iran again...and come to think of it, just like Iraq too. Legitimacy? I think not.
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