EU upbeat as presidential rivals drop poll protest

Saturday's presidential poll in Afghanistan went very well and was freer than expected, a European Union (EU) official told IRIN, as rival presidential candidates dropped their opposition to vote counting. Francesc Vendrell, the EU special representative for Afghanistan, said that despite some irregularities, reports from international observers, including members of the EU Democracy and Elections Support Mission, indicated that the Afghan people had overwhelmingly been able to cast their votes freely and without intimidation or violence. "On the basis of Saturday's voting, up to now we have the impression that this election has gone surprisingly well, [and] that [it] has been successful for the Afghan people," Vendrell said. The envoy referred to the issue of faulty indelible ink, allowing some people to vote more than once, as the most unfortunate problem. "But we don't think this was enough to impact in a huge negative way on the outcome of this elections," he said. President Hamid Karzai's chief rival, Yunus Qanuni, said on Monday that he and several other candidates had decided to withdraw the call to boycott Saturday's landmark election after suspicions emerged of illegal multiple voting. "We want unity in this election, not a boycott," he told reporters. "The people want it and we appreciate their feelings." The Afghan-UN Joint Election Management Body (JEMB) will decide which ballots are suspicious and how to deal with them before the actual count begins on Wednesday, election officials said. "In order to improve the transparency and legitimacy of the election, the JEMB decided to request the United Nations to identify an impartial panel of international electoral experts to fully investigate these protests and present recommendations to the JEMB," JEMB spokesman Sultan Mohammad Baheen told IRIN. According to Baheen, the presidential candidates have been asked to submit their detailed complaints by 6 pm on Tuesday. "The experts will immediately and carefully review these complaints." Vendrell supported the JEMB decision to fully investigate the irregularities that might have adversely affected the vote. "We encourage all the candidates to submit formally their complaints within the time frame provided in the Electoral Law." An exit poll conducted by the Washington-based International Republican Institute, a US think tank associated with President Bush's Republican Party, showed Karzai heading for a landslide. With more than 12,000 survey responses recorded, Karzai had over 50 percent of the vote and enough to avoid a run-off with second-placed Qanuni.