Azerbaijan, Baku, October 20 / Trend D. Khatinoglu /
Candidate at the presidential elections held in Afghanistan on August 20 and holding the third place with 500,000 votes according to the Independent Election Commission's results, Ramazan Bashardust, spoke in an exclusive interview with the Trend Persian Service.
Trend : On the eve of the presidential elections you have said in an interview with Trend that you believe in transparency of the forthcoming elections. Was your opinion changed?
Ramazan Bashardust: I admit that my thoughts about transparency of the elections were completely wrong. I could not imagine that presidential candidates, namely, Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah will use falsification. They carried out large-scale falsifications through all ways, including mayors, elders in the provinces, famous people, ministers, khans and other methods.
Q.: The Independent Election Commission liquidated votes in some polling stations on October 19. According to unofficial information, 950,000 votes will be liquidated. How do you assess the Election Commission's activity?
A.: The Independent Election Commission has admitted that several employees were involved in falsifications. According to my information, falsifications were mainly realized by military men, ministers, mayors, governors, prominent individuals, and especially military men, who have great authority in Afghanistan's provinces for 30 years and always dealt with falsifications.
Q.: Before, foreign observers have expressed doubts about transparency concerning 1,5 million votes gathered during the last presidential elections in Afghanistan.
Do you think that Karzai's power legitimate?
A.: Foreign observers' position is not fully clear to me, i.e., I think that they conduct double policy. The elections were held on August 20. All foreign observers talked about activity of people at the elections, democratic and transparent elections, etc. on August 21-25. But later most foreign observers began to talk about the facts of falsifications and passive participation of people at the elections. EU observers said that 1.5 million votes were falsificated. About 1,1 million voted for Karzai and 300,000 for Abdullah. During my meeting with employees of the Election Commission, they voiced suspicions concerning two million votes. They said that about 2,800 complaints were received. The Commission said that special attention is drawn to 751 complaints.
Q.: What actions has the Electoral Complaints Commission made concerning the elections?
A.: The Electoral Complaints Commission informed the Independent Election Commission to recount ballots in the ballot boxes in which more than 90 percent of votes for any candidate were revealed as a result of counting of votes.
Thus, ballots in 3,063 ballot boxes might have been recounted.
It is a pity that the UN representative in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, head of the Election Commission and head of the Electoral Complaints Commission came to a conclusion to recount ballots in any 313 ballot boxes of indicated number of ballot boxes.
But it was not actually done either. In this case, the presidency of Karzai has no legitimacy.
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