No Results Yet, But Charges of Vote-Rigging Fly in Afghanistan

The election in Afghanistan that looked like it would be wracked with fraud is starting to shape up that way. Former Foreign Minister and now the top challenger to President Hamid Karzai, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, leveled charges of fraud against Karzai and the Afghani government on Saturday. Abdullah's accusations focused on several provinces in the south of the country where Karzai was expected to do well but where there was also little oversight of the election due to recent attacks by the Taliban. The allegations are that Karzai's government is using the Taliban attacks as cover to rig the election returns in these southern provinces and boost his overall vote totals.

Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission has dismissed the fraud claims. The only problem is that the members of the "Independent Election Commission" are appointed by Karzai, which seems to defeat the whole "independent" idea of the commmission. US and European observers, meanwhile, have cataloged a large number of 'irregularities' as they're calling them, but so far have stopped short of calling the election a fraud.

For his part, Abdullah isn't trying to claim an outright victory, but he is building his case that Karzai couldn't have legitimately received the 51% of the vote he needs to avoid a run-off against the #2 candidate, which will presumably be Abdullah. He is said to be contacting some of the three dozen other presidential candidates to build a broad-based coalition to oppose Karzai in a possible run-off.