Ashraf Ghani on Tuesday was declared the winner of Afghanistan’s presidential vote after quite a while of delayed results and bitter dispute. However, the announcement threatened to tip the country into a full-blown political crisis on the cusp of a US peace deal with the Taliban.
Only hours after the announcement, Ghani’s leading challenger, Abdullah Abdullah — who accuses Afghanistan’s election commission of favoring the incumbent — also declared himself the winner and said that he would form a government of his own.
The vote, held in September 2019, in the midst of a record number of Taliban attacks proposed to destabilise the election, had itself been repeatedly delayed and marred by uncertainty as a peace deal between the US and the Taliban over the future of Afghanistan was approaching finish. In any case, President Donald Trump snubbed the talks only weeks before the election was expected, opening the path for the vote to continue.
Presently, with those negotiations continued and a conditional date announced for the signing of an agreement between the United States and the Taliban, the fresh political crisis risks derailing that fragile process, which was expected to open the path for exchanges between the Afghan government and the Taliban over the nation's political future.
Abdullah and a few other candidates have questioned approximately three lakh votes from a low turnout of about 1.8 million.
In a news conference announcing the result after an audit of about 15 per cent of the total vote, the election commission’s chief said Ghani had won with the tightest of margins — 50.64 per cent of the vote, just outperforming the 50 per cent minimum required for a win. Abdullah received 39.5 per cent, as indicated by the commission.
