Voters cast ballots despite attacks, equipment problems and coercion attempts
By Emma Graham-Harrison and Akhtar Mohammad Makoii in Herat
 |
Long lines formed at many polling stations. Photograph: Jawad Jalali/EPA
|
A series of deadly attacks and administrative chaos marred Afghanistan’s long-delayed parliamentary elections on Saturday, but large numbers of voters still braved the threats and long queues to cast their ballots.
There was bloodshed around the country, with nearly 200 attacks near polling stations or checkpoints, at least 28 people killed and scores more injured, the Afghan interior minister, Wais Barmak, said. One blast in Kabul, late in the day, killed at least three.
Even at stations spared violence there were widespread problems, from faulty voting registers and issues with new equipment for biometric ID checks, to officials who failed to show up for the 7am opening and attempts to coerce voters.
“People have been lining up to vote since 5am or 6am but the employees of the election commission didn’t arrive until after 8am,” said Tawab Faizi, a volunteer monitoring the vote in western Herat city.
“Many people are angry here, they queued for two or three hours but they were told that they cannot vote because their names are not on the list. There are many irregularities.”
The problems raised the prospects of the election – and the security worries that come with it – dragging on far beyond Saturday. The government said any voting stations that had opened late would stay open into the evening, and those that had not opened their doors until after 1pm would open again on Sunday.
Voters said they had few illusions about the state of Afghanistan’s fragile democracy, which is riddled with corruption and hampered by violence, but still saw the elections as their best hope of change at a time of extreme economic and security pressures.
“In today’s Afghanistan there is no good choice, we can only select between bad and worse. I and some other women voted for bad candidates to prevent the worse candidates wining,” said Faiza Ibrahimi, a radio presenter.
“I went to a polling station at 9am and waited for more than two hours to vote but I am not angry about this, I am happy because I can exercise my right to vote. A fair election is the only way to get out of this situation in Afghanistan.”
A large number of the candidates are young and making their first run for political office, and have campaigned on a promise of change in a body widely seen as fraud-ridden and ineffective.
“The man who I want to vote for is a young and educated person. I want to support him for two reasons,” said Jawad Mohammadi, 35, a resident of Herat, who queued up early to vote hoping to avoid any violence.
“Firstly, I don’t want the older candidates to win because most of them are involved in Afghanistan’s violent past. And secondly I want my generation to take power.”
Turnout and results may be unclear for a week or longer as results are collected from remote areas and counted at secure centres. There were nearly 9 million registrations to vote, but many of them are considered fraudulent or incorrect.
The parliamentary election is widely considered a trial run for a presidential poll due next year, making the security and administrative problems particularly worrying.
The vote was already several years overdue, and despite months of preparation, voting was suspended in around a third of polling stations. Two entire provinces did not hold elections.
Kandahar, the political and cultural heart of the south, suspended voting for a week after much of the provincial leadership was killed or injured in an insider attack on the eve of the vote. Authorities had earlier announced there would be no vote in eastern Ghazni.
Around 70,000 troops and police officers have been deployed to protect the elections, which the Taliban have condemned and sworn to disrupt. Before the voting, 10 candidates were killed, and hundreds of civilians were injured or lost their lives at election-related events.
There were attacks nationwide on voting day from far-eastern Nuristan province to central Ghor and western Farah, as well as in the capital. They included bomb blasts and rocket and mortar attacks. In eastern Kunar, fighters fired artillery on a road to polling stations.
Security fears kept many voters away from the polls. “I had registered myself in Herat and planned to vote here but my family told me not to,” said Rohulla Alizada, 27, a manager at a marketing company.
“They said for God’s sake, please don’t go to vote, don’t go to a polling station and if possible don’t go out of your home today, it’s dangerous.”
Hundreds of thousands more defied the threats however and queued for hours outside polling stations. Most anger in the long lines was directed not at the Taliban but at government corruption and incompetence.
Election workers turned up late in many areas and struggled to use biometric equipment, brought in at the last minute to verify voter identification and try to crack down on fraud.
The head of the independent election commission went on television to plead with voters for patience, saying many teachers who had been trained in the new system had not shown up, the Associated Press reported.
The Taliban had directly warned teachers and students to stay away from polls, but it was not clear if the two were related.
“There was a big problem with biometric system in many polling stations,” said Zabiullah Behjat, 25, who was working as a poll observer in Kabul. “When people put their fingers on the system, [it] didn’t work … Some election commission employees didn’t even know how to turn the machines on and off.”
Elsewhere there were reports that women were being pressured to vote publicly or hand over their ballot papers to polling station staff, and of people with valid voter identification cards being turned away because their names were not on voter rolls.
At one station in Herat, a protest began after dozens of women were barred from casting ballots because their names were not on the list.
“We have the right to vote but they don’t allow us,” said one woman protesting at the site who asked not to be named. “I don’t know why our names are not on the list. If they don’t allow us to vote, we will burn our ID cards here.”
