Afghanistan votes

April 5th, 2014 may prove to be the day that the Taliban in Afghanistan lost the election in which they had no candidates. An estimated seven million Afghans voted, and it is also estimated that almost one-third of those who voted were women. If this was to be viewed as a referendum on the Afghan Taliban, who collectively had vowed to disrupt the elections, the result would be a ringing rejection of them and all that they stand for. Despite the threats, voter turnout was high, people queued for hours in pouring rain and one photograph, of women standing in line with a plastic sheet to keep them dry being held overhead, quickly became an internet hit, posted and Tweeted tens of thousands of times. In some places, the polling stations were running out of ballot papers by midday. Polling everywhere was extended by an hour and the count is now underway.



It was not all sweetness and light, and there were reports of sporadic violence and of ballot boxes being found by observers being stuffed with falsified votes – but there were no major incidents and the security held in most places. There were marked differences in voting patterns between urban and rural areas, with the latter clearly not as enthusiastic in their voting.

Over 200 polling stations were closed as a result of ‘intimidation’. The militants have denounced the election as a ‘sham’ – but it was not. Neither was it an election that was as blatantly rigged as was the last, in large part because there is no sitting candidate nor any clear favourite and the field was wide open.

In the last election over a million votes were found to be fraudulent – it remains to be seen what the figure is this time around but there is a sense that whilst nobody knows who won yet, all can see that democracy won. It will be days before the final result is known, and there may be a run-off in May if there is no outright winner but the election in Afghanistan was a milestone and a positive one at that.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 7^th, 2014.

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