KABUL (Pajhwok): At a meeting convened by President Hamid Karzai the other day, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) presented its proposal for an additional audit aimed at strengthening the credibility of the country’s electoral process and acceptance of the results from the recent presidential election run-off by both campaigns and Afghans.
Observers have questioned the credibility of four pollsters who called Wednesday’s presidential election for Prabowo Subianto by the narrowest of margins, as seven other quick counts gave Joko Widodo a slightly bigger lead.
“We can’t let this difference between the quick counts cause political turbulence and undermine our democracy,” Rudi Rohi, a political expert at Nusa Cendana University in Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara, told the Jakarta Globe on Thursday.
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Obama administration had hoped that after years of frustration with President Hamid Karzai, a successful election in Afghanistan would finally produce a leader who could stabilize the country while working with the United States to allow an orderly withdrawal of American troops and end its longest war.
US President Barack Obama has spoken with Afghan presidential contender Abdullah Abdullah and rival Ashraf Ghani to urge calm and to call for a review of fraud charges in that country's election, the White House said.
The White House said Obama told both candidates that the US expects fraud allegations to be thoroughly reviewed, urging the two men to seek a resolution that does not undermine Afghanistan's fragile national unity.
There was growing international concern yesterday over the future ofAfghanistan after the trailing candidate in the country's presidential election toyed publicly with setting up a parallel government, the latest crisis to hit a poll that had been hailed as a showcase of the country's transformation.
The Independent Election Commission (IEC) announced preliminary results of the runoff presidential election Monday evening with Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai leading with 56.44 percent.
Presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah fell behind with 43.56 percent.
Tonight's results were made up of 100 percent of votes cast across the country.
Head of IEC Ahmad Yousuf Nuristani said the total number of voters announced this evening was eight million; exactly 8,109,403.
Although this year’s election will be the third direct presidential vote for Indonesia, the element of the unknown — and its potential ripple effect — differentiates this one from the others, leaving analysts uneasy about the outcome.
Elections in the politically binary United States provide voters with an effective either-or choice for presidential candidates each cycle. Although there is always a small percentage who casts a “vote of principle” for a minority party, the public knows to expect a winner from one of the two majority parties.
The July 9 presidential election is set for an extremely tight race, as a recent poll indicated on Wednesday that only a 3 percent gap remained between presidential hopefuls Prabowo Subianto and Joko “Jokowi” Widodo.
A joint survey by the Washington-based International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) and the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI), which is affiliated with noted pollster Saiful Mujani, found that Prabowo had continued to gain in popularity.
The Interior Minister has decided to allow individuals to own arms and ammunition. It plans to issue gun and explosives licences to ordinary citizens.
