Vote counting finally gets underway

The counting of votes began late on Thursday afternoon, five days after millions of Afghans voted in what has been described as the country's first ever democratic election. The UN-Government Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) said preliminary results would be announced in the next few days while the final results would take two weeks. "If the process goes rapidly we will be able to have at least a substantial result in a week to 10 days," Reginald Austin, a UN chief electoral officer, told IRIN on Thursday in the capital Kabul. Austin said 95 percent of the ballot boxes had arrived and counting had started in five centres including Kabul, Kunduz, Kandahar, Mazar-e-Sharif and Gardez. "Hopefully we will start counting in the Herat, Bamyan and Jalalabad centres on Saturday." After delays over charges of fraud and threats of boycotts by 15 presidential candidates, the counting started after an international independent commission was set up to investigate candidates' complaints. "The JEMB has received the first report and recommendations from the Expert Panel established to investigate the complaints lodged by candidates regarding election day," Sultan Mohammad Baheen, a JEMB spokesman, told IRIN. So far 43 complaints from four candidates, including incumbent President Hamid Karzai, have been filed. The three-member Expert Panel extended a deadline for complaints to be lodged until 6 pm on Thursday. The main complaints have been over the ink which was used to prevent multiple voting and was found to be able to be washed off. Other complaints included alleged intimidation of voters, opening and closing of polling centres not according to the main schedule and the issue of multiple voting. Baheen said ballot boxes of 10 polling centres and 11 polling stations have been quarantined "in order to give the Expert Panel additional time to evaluate candidate complaints that relate to those specific locations". A breakthrough agreement on Saturday's disputed ballot was reached late on Monday when Yunus Qanuni, who has the support of the powerful Northern Alliance and is the main rival of US-backed President Karzai, said he would accept the election result after the inquiry. Several other candidates among a group of 14 who declared in the middle of voting that they would boycott the results have adopted a similar stance.