The temporary win for Dr. Ashraf Ghani Ahnadzai, one of the two Afghan presidential candidates, who is leading the preliminary results of the second run-off elections, has not come easily. And these initial results don't mean that he has been elected president.
Preliminary results showed Ghani roughly a million votes ahead of his rival Abdullah Abdullah, with 8.1 million ballots cast.
The Afghan election commission, however, has cautioned that there is no winner as yet, as millions of votes could be subjected to a special audit for fraud.
Reacting to the preliminary results, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that any means of seizing power illegally in Afghanistan would lead to an end to financial and security support to the country from his country. The suggestion of forming a parallel government in Afghanistan has raised political hackles in the U.S.
Abdullah Abdullah, has rejected the declared run-off preliminary results, stating that he is a victim of "industrial-scale ballot box stuffing". Some of his most powerful supporters have protested and are even thinking of forming of a breakaway government.
His running mate, Mohammad Mohaqeq, said they will not accept these results, unless their demands are honoured and fraudulent voters are pulled out from the count.
Where Ghani's camp agreed for an audit of 7,000 polling stations, Abdullah's camp wants an audit for 11,000 stations.
Ahmad Yousuf Nuristani, Head, Independent Election Commission (IEC) accepted that there have been some technical problems and frauds during the election process despite making efforts to make it fair and transparent. He has also clarified that the announced results are not final.
The Election Commission has said that they would need more time to conduct the required auditing.
Ahnadzai leads the run-off elections by 56.44 per cent of votes in the preliminary results, whereas, Abdullah lags behind with 43.56 per cent of votes. There is a difference of 1,024,249 votes between the two candidates.
Nuristani said total number of voters has been recorded as eight million so far. Out of these 8,109,403 voters, 62.37 per cent voters were male and 37.63 per cent were female.
He added that on the day of election 928 polling booths were closed, of which 579 were closed prior to elections. In 299 booths votes were not casted and 50 booths were declared closed due to security reasons by IEC.
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