By Steve Hynd
Yesterday the people of Afghanistan voted in their parliamentary elections. Or at least, a few of them did. The Independent Election Commission (IEC) is saying that over 4 million votes were cast, giving a little over a 40% turnout, but no-one except those with a vested interest in the elections going well actually believes them. Four million individual voters would still represent only 24% of all the registered voters with cards. According to journalists on the spot, actual turnouts were as low as 20% in Kabul and 11% in Kandahar.
In fact voter apathy and vote-rigging, rather than anti-vote violence, are the main stories out of the elections. Reports of election-linked violence (that is, all of it on the day whether it really was or not) are down, with "only" 303 incidents as opposed to 479 in the '09 presidential election. That's progress of a sort, I suppose, but then again election day '09 was the single most violent day in the whole nine-year occupation.
By contrast, dropping turnouts and voter apathy are becoming a major problem for government legitimacy, as a table by Martine van Bijlert of the Afghan Analysts Network illustrates:
For anyone who wonders how this tallies with past elections, here is a short list to refresh our memories (and don�t forget these totals represent the number of ballots cast; there is no way to know how many voters these figures represent):
2004: 7.4 million (first presidential election)
2005: 6.4 million (first parliamentary and provincial council election)
2009: 4.8 million (presidential, post-audit) / 6.0 million (provincial council)
2010: 3.6 million (parliamentary election)
The declining trend signifies several things, most prominently a growing disillusionment and disengagement with the process, and the impact of a worsening security situation; but also factors such as a decrease in the number of ballots distributed (during the first presidential election 18 million ballots were printed) and a decrease in the number of polling centres. Basically there were less opportunities to cast ballots - either through a genuine vote, or through the various forms of electoral fraud.
And that electoral fraud was also widespread. If there was less than in the presidential elections, it seems only because there were less ballots available to stuff.
Paul McGeough notes some of the most obvious frauds:
As US General David Petraeus argued loftily that Afghanistan's future belonged to the people, not to extremists, reports of fraud and violence poured in from the provinces. These included:
- What locals interpreted as an attempt to intimidate them by having hundreds of soldiers march into a polling place at Pul-e-Charkhi, east of Kabul.
- Many polling stations in conservative areas having no female electoral staff, effectively discouraging women from casting their ballots.
- The widespread failure of the much-touted indelible ink used to prevent multiple voting.
- In Helmand province, 26 individuals were arrested with multiple cards.
- Electoral officials in Wardak province were accused of stuffing ballot-boxes; and in Kunduz, in the north, journalists watched in amazement as electoral officials and members of some campaign teams locked the doors for a couple of hours and filled out a small mountain of ballot papers themselves.
As the author of so much corruption last year, Hamid Karzai provoked a deep intake of breath among analysts last week when he volunteered that while ''irregularities'' were inevitable, Saturday's vote would be no worse than last year's.
The most blatant indication of efforts by the President's entourage to fix the outcome could be seen in southern Kandahar, where his brother Ahmad Wali's preferred candidates were presumed to win all 14 seats up for grabs in the province.
And the independent Free and Fair Elections Foundation of Afghanistan - thew largest observer of the vote with over 7,000 people on-site around the country - said today it "has serious concerns about the quality of elections".
But the violence, apathy and fraud weren't enough to discourage the usual suspects from spinning yesterday as a victory for democracy:
The fact that millions of people cast ballots, even if the preliminary tally indicated a significant drop-off from the number who voted in last summer's presidential election, was portrayed by Western officials as a potent sign of hope.
"The people of Afghanistan sent a powerful message today," said U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top Western commander. "The voice of Afghanistan's future does not belong to the violent extremists and terror networks. It belongs to the people."
The U.S. Embassy and the United Nations commended voters' courage. But the embassy, perhaps mindful that the massive fraud in the August 2009 presidential vote took some days to emerge, noted that "the results and quality of the election will not be immediately evident.
The electoral commission has said it probably won't finalise tallies until the end of October. If matters run their course anything like in '09 it will be considerable longer, likely leading to further unrest and undermining the thin props of legitimacy on which Karzai's corrupt government now stands. Amazing, Karzai himself had the brass balls to say that "This has been another positive step in strengthening democracy in our country."
For the West, though, this has been an excersize in fig-leafing - part of an attempt to create a face-saving exit from Afghanistan rather than just a sensible and expeditious one.
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