Afghanistan Elections: They Both Won?

Image via Wikipedia

Three days before the Afghan Elections, Secretary Clinton released a statement urging caution until the official results: “It will be several days before we have preliminary results and we hope initial reports will refrain from speculation until results are announced. Final results could take several weeks. We call on candidates and their supporters to behave responsibly before and after the elections.”

One day after the elections, both Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah said they won yesterday's vote. UK’s The Guardian reports President Karzai's staff as saying that the incumbent president had taken a majority of votes, making a second round run-off unnecessary. It also reports that Abdullah's spokesman, Sayyid Agha Hussain Fazel Sancharaki, said the former foreign minister was ahead with 62% of the vote.

Image via Wikipedia

Pajhwok Afghan News is reporting that unofficial results indicate President Hamid Karzai and Dr. Abdullah Abdullah dominated vote counts in Kabul and are virtually in a dead heat (tied) in a dozen or so polling station counts.

The NYT quotes the Special Envoy to Af/Pak: “The test is going to be in the counting,” Richard C. Holbrooke [...] said in an interview after he toured four polling stations in Kabul. “If the will of the electorate is going to be thwarted, it will happen in the counting.”

Check out U.S. Embassy Kabul's Photos - Election Day 2009 here.