Poll recount conf irms Ashraf Ghani as Afghan leader
Audit ends five months after election marred by fraud, intimidation claims
Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission (IEC) on Tuesday confirmed President Ashraf Ghani as the winner of last year’s elections, more than five months after the polls closed.
IEC chief Hawa Alam Nuristani told a news conference in Kabul that Ghani had secured 923,592 votes, or 50.64 percent of the total.
Ghani’s rival, Afghanistan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, gained 720,841 or 39.53 percent of the vote, she said.
The Sept. 28 election was disrupted by Taliban attacks, and marred by claims of intimidation, voting irregularities and fraud.
The IEC had failed on numerous occasions to announce the results in accordance with its election timeline. Two months ago, it said Ghani was on course to win a second term, prompting Abdullah to contest the long-delayed preliminary results.
He appealed to the Independent Electoral hands” to fight the menace. “Together, we can eliminate polio from across the world, and I appeal to all the world leaders to join hands to fight out polio,” Guterres said in comments to the media on Tuesday after participating in an anti-polio drive at a private school in Lahore, the capital of the Punjab province. The UN chief was accompanied by Punjab Health Minister Dr. Yasmeen Rashed, and a coterie of other officials. “He appreciated the federal and provincial governments’ efforts to curb this menace,” Dr. Rashed told Arab News.
Pakistan is one of just two countries in the world, besides
Complaints Commission, demanding the removal of about 300,000 votes allegedly fraudulent votes. Nuristani said the IEC had declared Ghani the winner following a
Afghanistan, where cases of polio are still prevalent. Guterres said that eradicating polio from the world map was the UN’s first priority, before commending the government and frontline workers for ensuring that Pakistan was now a “safer country as compared to the past.”
“I express solidarity with the workers who laid their lives in the line of duty,” the UN chief said, paying homage to officials who were targeted and killed, following rumors that the immunization programs were harmful for children.
However, by hiring local workers who speak the same language and understand the nuances involved, the special audit and recount of the disputed ballots.
The declaration of Ghani’s win and leadership for another five years comes amid announcements by Taliban and US negotiators that a peace deal is expected to be signed within a few days. The agreement follows more than a year of talks in Doha, Qatar.
Ghani and Abdullah have been sharing power based on a deal brokered by Washington following a highly disputed election in 2014. Both have had sharp differences over the issue of peace talks with the Taliban.
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Guterres said that eradicating polio was the UN’s first priority, before commending the workers for ensuring that Pakistan was now a ‘safer country as compared to the past.’
campaign has seen better acceptance. According to the World Health Organization, the number of registered cases of polio stood at 20,000 a year in the early 1990s. That number has dropped down to seven reported cases from various provinces thus far in 2020.