Karzai Vote Rigging Is Official: The Strange Counts, Patterns & Figures

On the 8th anniversary of 911, it seems quite sad that there should be so many related news stories still making the front pages. In the past week, the public in the US have been furiously debating the resignation of Van Jones, a senior adviser to Obama, over him signing a petition back in 2001 which stated that the Bush administration... "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war", and the news coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan appears to get worse as the years roll in. This latest fiasco - also known as the 2009 Afghan Presidential Election - epitomises the corrupt mess which the Bush mafia have left behind, and it is the people once again who are made to suffer. As if the country was not unstable enough, this proven vote rigging by Karzai will help to further drive a huge wedge between the different factions, and it clearly shows that either the coalition do not have the situation under any semblance of control, or they do, and they are corruptly helping Karzai to forcefully hold onto power.

September.11.2009 - George Valentine Corr, Blatant News Editor
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THE 2009 AFGHANISTAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
For obvious reasons I wouldn't generally quote directly from a Wikipedia article, but the opening line of the community's article on the 2009 Afghan presidential election encapsulates the vote beautifully... "The second presidential election in Afghanistan under the present constitution of Afghanistan, held on August 20, 2009, was characterized by lack of security, low voter turnout and widespread ballot stuffing, intimidation, and other electoral fraud". Viva le Democracy! Afghanistan today is minus it's terrifying Taliban regime, but they have been replaced by country-wide corruption, record exports of heroin, and it is beginning to look like the country has got a dictator in the hot seat too. And he is the worst kind of dictator, the kind that has the backing of a global superpower who have a history of setting up these puppet states - which generally treat the country's people badly, and the country's resources as their own. This is not just a view of some commentators such as ourselves, but apparently large slices of the Afghan population also feel the same way, when you look at the overall votes cast for Karzai, and at the turnout too.

WHO VOTED FOR WHO?
Well the simple answer to that question is, nobody actually knows, due to the conflicting and confusing words which have come from inside Afghanistan - from both official and 'independent' sources - and from foreign groups and news sources. The general consensus from some of the more respected independent sources would appear to suggest that about 30-35% turnout may have been achieved country-wide, at the very best, but with the distribution of votes extremely varied in different provinces and cities. The UK's media have been up in arms about the turnout in Helmand Province in particular, with The Times stating that... "In Helmand, where British troops have been deployed since 2006, only about 50,000 people [about 8%] cast ballots out of an estimated 620,000 registered voters, according to the local election chief", and they go on to say that... "fewer than 150 people cast ballots in the district where British forces launched Operation Panther’s Claw in June". That district, Nad e-Ali, was secured and made safe for voters at the cost of 10 British Soldiers' lives and, according to the British Army, over 200 Afghan lives too. That's well over 200 lives for 150 votes cast, and the facts directly contradict the recent statement by the commander of British forces in Helmand Province, Brigadier Tim Radford. Only weeks ago he proudly told the media that Operation Panther’s Claw had actually allowed an extra 80,000 people to vote. What a load of oul propaganda. This election has been a mess from start to finish, and we must ask ourselves why the coalition officials are not being more forthright with their own media, and I believe the answer is Karzai. For whatever reason, they need to keep him in power.

THE CURRENT OFFICIAL RESULT SUITS BOTH THE US & KARZAI
The latest official results, released just a couple of days ago, contain the votes from 91.6% of the polling stations, and they show that Karzai has 2,959,093 votes, which is 54.1% of the total votes polled. This takes him conveniently over the 50% needed to avoid a second round run-off, and the allegations of fraud are flying about. His past has not helped his local standing either. His links to UNOCOL (Union Oil Company of California) as reported in the French newspaper, Le Monde, on December the 9th 2001, and his initial placement as president of Afghanistan by the Bush administration after the 2001 invasion, show a deep mutual appreciation between Karzai and elements within the US, and he is not embarrassed at all about that close relationship. During a 2008 interview with CNN he famously said these words... "I am called a puppet because we are grateful to America, then let that be my nickname".

PROBLEM#1 - THE NOW PROVEN VOTE FRAUD POINTS AT KARZAI
In 2004 he was elected for the first time as president of Afghanistan in the country's first proper election, with 4,443,029 votes (official figures) which translated into 55.4% of those who voted in that year's elections. The 2009 elections are only the second such presidential vote, and yet again it looks like the independent candidate, Hamid Karzai, has stolen the show. But, nothing is confirmed yet as yesterday the countries vote monitoring body said that it had uncovered "clear and convincing evidence of fraud" in 83 polling stations, and has ordered that their votes be scrapped. The majority of those illegal votes were cast for Karzai, and they are mostly in Karzai stronghold's. The officials concluded that the... "ballots were not legally cast, or were not legally counted", and the figure of polling stations under investigation by that body is now said to number 650, and rising. Out of a total of 25,450 polling stations that does seem quite a hefty number of possible local fraud operations, which would suggest a centrally-organised national fraud, carried out by the Karzai regime, with obvious help or support from the coalition forces, without whom they could not have achieved this. The number of ballots that are under investigation from those 650+ polling stations is said to number 300,000 votes in total, and assuming those are mostly for Karzai, if these were all voided his total would then be below that 50% mark which would ultimately force him into a re-run. Another election would cause a logistical nightmare for the coalition, and it may end up with Karzai loosing his presidency to a much more patriotic figure, which wouldn't suit anybody, but the Afghan's themselves.

PROBLEM#2 - THE LENGTHY RELEASE SCHEDULE FOR THE OFFICIAL RESULTS
Other potential warning signs are the timing of the counting and the announcement of results. The vote went down on the 20th of August, and the polls closed one hour late, due to the authorities trying to get more people to vote. In our western elections we would hope to see some results coming in before the poll even closes, but in the 2009 Afghanistan Presidential Elections the first 'preliminary results' were released on the 26th of August, and they included just 10% of the polling stations' votes. Those results were followed by a painful blood-letting of releases on August the 27th (17% of polling stations counted), 29th (35%), 31st (47.8%), and on September the 2nd (60.3%), 6th (74.2%) and 8th (91.6%). What I can't understand is why didn't the coalition invest just a couple of million - out of the US$226bn spent on the war in Afghanistan since 2001 - to help get those votes counted a lot quicker, in line with our own western standards. This long and drawn-out release of results has only added to the tension in the country, but I believe that it was deliberate, and here is why.

PROBLEM#3 - THE BUFFERING PATTERN TO GET KARZAI OVER THE LINE
On the 24th of August, results were being 'leaked' which suggested a landslide 70%+ win for Karzai, and this may have been to test the waters. When numerous complaints were received from within Afghanistan, and when protests began to emerge, this idea may have been scrapped, and within 2 days the preliminary results were being fed to the media. This is how the results have accumulated for Karzai; after 10% of the vote was counted (he had 40.6% of the votes), 17% (45%), 35% (46.3%), 47.8% (45.9%), 60.3% (47.3%), 74.2% (48.6%) and 91.6% (54.1%). Anybody notice a definite pattern within those figures? It seems that enough was added onto Karzai's vote on each round of vote counting to safely get him over the finish line, whilst keeping the outcome of this volatile election in doubt at the same time, right up until the very last minute. But justice may yet prevail, as he may yet loose his illegal buffer of votes if Afghanistan's vote monitoring body keep's up it's current pressure on the vote-counters, and doesn't give in to the witch-hunt which they are no doubt facing in the background, from both the western coalition and the Karzai regime. Is there currently a more dangerous job anywhere in the world?

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