Polls Close After Afghan Voters Cast Ballots for New Leader
By Sharon Behn, Voice of America
Polling stations in Afghanistan have closed after a heavy turnout for Saturday's historic presidential election.
The turnout was so high for the country's first democratic transfer of power that some polling stations ran out of ballots.
Security was tight across the nation because Taliban militants promised to disrupt Saturday's vote, but the voting seemed to be relatively free of violence.
The special U.N. representative to Afghanistan, Jan Kubis, praised Afghan voters for the turnout "despite the threats and intimidations" they had received from insurgents.
The election was seen as pivotal for Afghanistan’s political and economic future, as well as a test of wills between the Afghan people and the Taliban.
There were three frontrunners among eight presidential candidates: Ashraf Ghani, a former finance minister and World Bank official; former foreign minister Zalmai Rassoul; and Abdullah Abdullah, also a former foreign minister.
Some 450 provincial government seats also were at stake.
Voting in Kabul
Dressed in traditional blue burqas or more Western suits, hundreds of Afghans from all backgrounds crowded into polling stations to cast their ballots for a new president Saturday.
Braving Taliban threats and grey skies, voters filed past heavy security and were searched by military personnel before being allowed inside polling stations.
Once in, women and men entered different rooms to fill out large paper ballots, hopeful their votes will help bring peace and jobs to Afghanistan after years of war.
Haji Bibi, a 94-year-old woman almost bent double with age, was helped to a chair outside after having cast her ballot.
She says she is waiting for better things to come in life, and wishing for a peaceful life for the country, and that young and old people alike should vote for peace and security.
The Taliban claims it had carried out 246 attacks during the polling. The militant group often exaggerates.
Afghanistan deputy interior minister Gen. Ayub Slanagi said that by early afternoon, one suicide bomber had been arrested in Faryab province trying to enter a polling station, and two people were killed and five wounded in a bomb attack in eastern Logar province. Earlier, one explosion in the eastern city of Jalalabad left no casualties and clashes in central Uruzgan province left one dead.
Good turnout
Turnout was reportedly good in most of the country, and in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, turnout was particularly heavy, according to local media. Candidate Ashraf Ghani, one of the three front-runners in the presidential race, had held huge political rallies in the southern province, the site of years of heavy fighting against the Taliban.
The head of the Independent Election Commission, Ahmad Yusuf Nuristani, said Saturday turnout was surprisingly strong around the country. He said due to new security concerns, an additional 200 out of 6,400 polling stations had been closed, bringing the total number of closed voting sites to 900.
Ghani’s closest rivals are Zalmai Rassoul, who also has a strong base in the south, and Abdullah Abdullah, who draws his support from different areas of the country.
Twenty-one-year-old voter Idriss said the elections are important for all Afghans.
“It is 10 years we are facing with bad problems in Afghanistan, in all sides of Kabul and other cities in Afghanistan, but we are, everybody is trying to vote for a president who would be great for Afghanistan and make a future that is better for them,” he said.
Observers in place
Candidate-nominated observers, election officials and local independent monitors were standing watch inside the polling stations to prevent the widespread fraud that marred the last elections in 2009.
According to the Ministry of Interior, six people were arrested Saturday when they were caught cheating at the polls. Five others were detained in eastern Khost province when they were found carrying 1,000 fake IDs.
Ihmaduddin, an observer in a Kabul polling station, was determined to prevent any ballot rigging.
He says it’s his job control and supervise the voting process to prevent fraud. He says he and others are also here to observe the counting of the ballots. He says we can observe and take pictures and report what we find to the Independent Election Commission and Complaints Commission.
Preliminary results are expected by April 24, but a final tally of the votes is only to be announced May 14. But analysts are already predicting a second-round runoff.