Afghan Election Day – and After: Rocks Under the Rice?
Afghan Election Day – and After: Rocks Under the Rice?
Looks like by and large the Afghan elections are free of major problems. The international observers are starting to issue statements (see iri.org), the U.S. government (or at least Ambassador Holbrooke) seems pretty satisfied. If there was fraud, chances are it happened before election day – in the election personnel appointments — or may be a problem in the counting. At the national level, President Hamid Karzai’s campaign manager, Deen Mohammed says that his 29,000 monitors have reported in that there will not have to be a runoff election. This implies they think over 50 percent of the voters voted for the imcumbent. Abdullah Abdullah’s camp is also claiming victory. Either way, we have yet to find out whether, as the Afghans say in Dari: “Dar zere Pallau sang bood,” or “under the rice is stone.” It remains to be seen whether the elections serve up some juicy meat, or hard stones to the Afghans with their rice.
What we do know is that there were no major incidents of violence. In Jalalabad the night before the elections, security forces found 12 IEDs and disabled them, and during the morning someone lobbed a grenade at a polling center, but no one was hurt. And across Afghanistan it appears to have been about the same — some fights, some explosions, but nothing major. Among internationals, everyone agrees that the Afghans were well-trained and did a competent job administering the elections.
The question mark is turnout – an issue complicated by the lack of a voter registration list (more on this in a few words). International observers noted low turnout, especially relative to the 2004 presidential elections. In Jalalabad, one female polling center (with 14 polling stations) which had ballots delivered for 8400 people, only had 668 turn up to vote; that is a turnout just above 1/14th the total expected voters (again no registration list). The average turnout across the city of Jalalabad appeared to be around 20 percent. But at the national level, the Afghan officials — specifically the head of the Independent Electoral Commission — declared that turnout across the country was high. A possible explanation for this discrepancy is a high rural turnout, which international observers cooped up in the urban areas would have missed.
One thing is clear — putting the Afghan government fully in charge of these second round of presidential elections and provincial council elections should have been tempered by more international involvement. Kabul could still have been in charge, but contracted with United Nations and other organizations to help with critical tasks such as building a voter registration list. Such a list is perhaps the best tool — even if flawed at its inception — for countering fraud. With a list of voters, you prevent people from casting multiple votes because you can cross-check registration cards with a list, you can control where people vote, and you can better understand turnout numbers. In Bangladesh with its roughly 150 million people, the army conducted Bangladesh’s first voter registration ever in a time-period of 9 months. Even in Afghanistan in 2005 voters did not have identification cards; they often didn’t even know when they were born (“How old are you? Ahhh…approximately thirty.” ) It stands to reason that at least by the time the elections were postponed in the spring, the Afghan government might have turned to the UN or been directed/urged to do so in order to get help building the voter registration list.
Beyond the voter registration list, the international community might have helped with vetting election officials and workers. Long-term international observers and other internationals and Afghans not affiliated with the incumbent President Karzai expressed concern that the election officials were appointed by the President, throwing into question their neutrality. In addition, some polling station chairman complained that some campaign observers were uneducated or even illiterate so they could not understand what was going on and caused problems in the polling stations. The international community might have built upon the work it had done in 2004-2005 running the last round of elections and helped the Afghans avoid some of these problems. This lesson must be retained in order to ensure that the 2010 National Assembly elections — which could eventually be more significant than the presidential and provincial council elections — are administered to a higher standard. If not not now, then eventually, Afghans should be able to trust democratic elections to deliver the meat under the rice.
[...] The Flash Point Blog » Blog Archive » Afghan Election Day – and After: Rocks Under the Rice? Looks like by and large the Afghan elections are free of major problems. ….The question mark is turnout – an issue complicated by the lack of a voter registration list…….One thing is clear — putting the Afghan government fully in charge of these second round of presidential elections and provincial council elections should have been tempered by more international involvement.….The international community might have built upon the work it had done in 2004-2005 running the last round of elections and helped the Afghans avoid some of these problems. This lesson must be retained in order to ensure that the 2010 National Assembly elections — which could eventually be more significant than the presidential and provincial council elections — are administered to a higher standard. [...]
The Farkas article provides another dimension to the reporting in the West on the Afghan elections. Specifically, it would suggest that the violence may not have been the direct cause for low voter turn-out in some cities. Also, the article raises the important question of differing voter turn-out between cities, especially high-risk centers and the countryside. Lastly, the recommendation for greater UN involvement is appropriate, although I suspect that might not satisfy the question of the legitimacy of the outcome for Afghans. Excellent piece.