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90 Percent of Afghan Electorate Registered for October Vote
India Daily
August 2, 2004
Photo by the Reuters
Afghanistan: About 90 per cent of the Afghan electorate have signed up to vote in October's landmark presidential election, the United Nations said on Sunday, as it began winding down a registration effort marred by bloody attacks on election staff and voters.
According to the latest UN figures, 8.7 million of an estimated 9.8 million eligible voters have collected ID cards that will allow them to cast a ballot when polling begins October 9 in Afghanistan's first-ever direct national vote.
The enthusiastic turnout is a relief for the world body, which has overcome misgivings about Afghanistan's readiness for elections under strong pressure from the United States. The vote had been delayed from June because of slow progress disarming warlords' private armies. A vote for Parliament was put off until next spring.
It is also a welcome surprise for President Hamid Karzai, who is widely expected to defeat 22 rivals to secure a new five-year term. The US-backed interim leader was still saying in June that 6 million would be enough.
"The participation is amazing," UN spokesman David Singh said. "There was a lot of scepticism about this process at the beginning, but the targets have been fulfilled."
Registration for elections, which are supposed to cap a UN-sponsored peace drive begun after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, started last December in eight Afghan cities, and was extended across the country in the spring.
The response has been strong in the north, west and centre of the country, where regional leaders - including several opposed to Karzai's plans for a strong central government - have encouraged their supporters to sign up and hundreds of registration sites have already closed.
Ethnic rivalry in a country deeply scarred by years of infighting has also encouraged communities to make sure they are fully represented - including through their women, who account for 41 percent of the total registered voters.
In the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, for instance, Singh said the number registered had exceeded the projected total - suggesting either fraud or that the estimate of the electorate was far too conservative.
Officials acknowledge cases of people registering more than once, but say a dab of indelible ink on every voter's finger will limit fraud on polling day. Many underage Afghans may also have slipped through.
Still, registration teams will have to work more in the south and southeast, where a virulent Taliban insurgency threatens to de-couple militant heartlands from the rest of the country.
At least nine people working to prepare the elections have been killed in attacks sometimes claimed by the Taliban, despite efforts by some 20,000 US-led troops to protect the process.
Most recently, an Afghan election worker and a voter died Wednesday when a bomb exploded in a mosque being used as registration centre in Ghazni province. A mine seriously injured three election workers in the Taliban stronghold of Uruzgan on Friday, Afghan officials said. So far, the south accounts for just 12 percent of the total number of people registered.
Security in areas there "has to be addressed and improved," Singh said. "Every effort will be made to ensure that people get a chance to take part."
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