Focus on presidential poll

Shivering under her all-enveloping burqa, Noorjahan, a 45-year-old housewife, stood in a long queue on Saturday, waiting patiently to cast her vote at a central polling station in the capital, Kabul. The mother of eight was one of thousands of women in Kabul who assembled to vote early in the morning, even before the stations had opened. "I am here to elect the president of Afghanistan. This is the highest value ever given to an ordinary Afghan," she told IRIN. The women, many of them cradling babies, appeared upbeat. "We are happy, this is like a party, it is something good after so much despair," one shouted enthusiastically as voters shared food and drink to sustain themselves during the long wait. People everywhere appeared extremely hopeful. Almost everyone IRIN interviewed, both in the capital and the southern city of Kandahar - former stronghold of the Taliban - hoped the elections would bring sustainable peace and security to the country, emerging from decades of war and conflict. "The city [Kandahar] is empty of cars and crowds, like the days of civil war and bloody fighting, but this time we are not rushing to bunkers for protection but to polling stations to elect our president," Mohammad Hamayoon, a taxi driver, enthused to IRIN. Hamayoon said he had lost six family members during the civil war and, despite the fear of attacks, he had sent his only son and wife to vote. "I was really scared of some incidents during the voting but I thought we should go because it [voting] is a fight against the rule of the gun," the 50 year old said. DISRUPTION MINIMAL By evening on polling day it had become clear that Afghanistan's first-ever presidential election had passed off more or less peacefully. Widespread attacks threatened by the Taliban never materialised. The rebels did launch a small number of deadly assaults around the country, but they themselves took the biggest hit, losing 25 men in a clash with US and Afghan forces in the south, according to the US military. Lt-Gen David Barno, the top US commander in Afghanistan, told The Associated Press in a phone interview on Sunday that the election could sound the rebels' death knell. "The Taliban basically didn't show. They had very limited attacks," he said. "Yesterday was a huge defeat for the Taliban." Security had been the leading concern in the run-up to the election. Although around 100,000 Afghan and international security personnel were overseeing the historic poll, the worst had been expected. "There was very good coordination between the Afghan national police together with the Afghan national army, the coalition [US-led forces] and the ISAF [international peacekeeping forces based in Kabul]," Lutfullah Mashal, an Interior Ministry spokesperson, told IRIN. Mashal said they had impounded three trucks loaded with explosives in Kandahar and arrested an unspecified number of people trying to launch attacks against polling stations in various parts of the country. "We also arrested six people in Kabul who were intimidating people to vote for a particular candidate," he added. A convoy carrying ballot papers was attacked in Uruzgan province and three policemen were killed, but elsewhere the feared violence by Taliban insurgents failed to materialise. Very early results could emerge later this week. But electoral spokesman Aykut Tavsel said, "I don't think we will see a trend as to who is leading for about a week." He said poor communications would mean that final results could take until 30 October. CANDIDATES CRY FOUL But faulty ink, not the threat of terrorist attacks, proved more of a challenge to the credibility of the elections, which cost the international donors almost US $200 million. Fifteen of the sixteen presidential candidates called for the poll to be rerun after problems with the indelible ink used to prevent multiple voting. Voters at some polling stations in the capital Kabul told IRIN that the ink used on their thumbnails could easily be washed off. Election officials noted "some technical problems" and said candidates' complaints would be investigated, but ruled out a second ballot. "Halting the voting at this point is unjustified and would deny individuals their fundamental right to vote," a spokesman for the Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB), a UN and government joint commission, said in a statement. According to the JEMB, in addition to indelible ink, each voter had a polling card with their photo attached, punched with a hole, limiting the opportunity for fraud. The candidates' complaints stood in sharp contrast to the enthusiastic will of hundreds of thousands of Afghans who waited in long queues, often until late in the evening, to cast their votes. In many places, voting was extended to cope with the demand. LOCAL AND INTERNATIONAL LEGITIMACY The elections received national and international support. The Free and Fair Elections Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA), a local elections observer agency, in a statement, congratulated Afghans for "peaceful elections". It said "the large participation of Afghans is an encouraging sign of people's participation in the democratic process." FEFA had deployed 2,300 observers across the country to monitor the process. More than 300 international observers and tens of thousands of supporters of the presidential candidates were also monitoring the poll, where security was adequate. Meanwhile, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which had been observing election preparations and the poll itself, expressed satisfaction while acknowledging that the process had not been without its limitations. "I think the process on Saturday was successful and it gave the Afghan people a chance to come out and register their views, and obviously they did it with enthusiasm." Robert Barry, the head of the OSCE election mission to Afghanistan, told IRIN. The OSCE said the demand to rerun the elections was against the will of the Afghan people, but that there should be an investigation into the candidates' complaints of irregularities. "Based on the reports from our teams, as well as information provided by the European Union election experts, domestic monitors and delegations from a number of countries, we concur with the JEMB that the candidates' demand to nullify the elections is unjustified." On Monday, election authorities announced a suspension in vote counting while accusations that the vote had not been free and fair were investigated. The United Nations, which had done much to prepare for the controversial poll, reported that Saturday's participation had been "massive", with a strong showing by female voters. "The reports are of an impressive turnout of voters in all the stations. Large queues, large number of women and men, good security, and no significant security incident was reported," Manoel de Almeida e Silva, a spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), said. "There were some problems such as the ink," he said, adding that these and other irregularities needed to be addressed and observed by the JEMB. According to the UN, ballot boxes from 5,000 polling stations began to be moved on Sunday to eight regional centres. US President George Bush, keen to present Afghanistan as a foreign policy success as he heads to November polls, hailed the vote as "a really great thing". "Just three years ago, women were being executed in the sports stadium. Today they're voting for a leader of a free country ... amazing, isn't it? Freedom is beautiful," Bush said while campaigning in Iowa.