Afghan Election Recount Continues

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.

MICHELE NORRIS, host:

And I'm Michele Norris.

It's been nearly two months since Afghans went to the polls for their presidential election. The outcome has still not been decided. Initial results give President Hamid Karzai a slim majority, but it's widely agreed that the elections were tarnished by fraud and a recount is now underway.

NPR's Jackie Northam is in Kabul and she joins us now. Jackie, what can you tell us about why this process seems to be taking so long?

JACKIE NORTHAM: Well, there is several reasons. First of all, it took the election complaints commission, which is looking into this fraud, a while to figure out just what to do about it. There were thousands of ballot boxes that appeared to be problematic. And initially and ideally the commission was going to look into each and every case. But it ahs decided that it would take way too long and it would cost too much money. So, they came up with another solution, which involved doing a sampling of ballots. It's a particular method like an audit, where they'd sample 10 percent of the tainted votes and it'd give them an idea of whether Karzai really was the winner or whether there would need to be a runoff election. And I spoke with the commission today and they said they're hoping those results will be in by this weekend. But, you know, their target dates have been delayed before and, in fact, we thought we'd hear the results last weekend and that just didn't happen.

NORRIS: Well, yesterday we heard that one of the five members of that complaints commission announce that he was quitting. He said there was too much foreign interference. What was he referring to? And will his decision - with his decision, should we expect that this will slow down the process even more?

NORTHAM: Well, he was referring to the three Western members of the panel. There were - the panel was actually made up of - was made up of five people. There were two Afghan men and three Westerners. And so he said, yes, there was too much foreign interference and they were making their own decisions. It doesn't seem to have had an effect of slowing down the sampling process. What it's done though is insert this question of foreign involvement. And as this is a conspiratorially-minded society, there's always the suggestion that Westerners, in particularly the U.S., are trying to pull the strings here. But the man, who quit, Mustafa Barakzai, is a supporter of Karzai.

And so there's a theory that he quit because perhaps the count was looking more likely that there would be a runoff - in other words that Karzai may not get the majority that he needed to avoid a runoff, and that Barakzai's charge of foreign interference could be used by the Karzai government further on to protest the result.

NORRIS: Jackie, wouldn't a runoff election present a whole new set of problems?

NORTHAM: It would. And not just for the incumbent President Karzai, but for many others as well. You know, a runoff election, if needed, is supposed to be done within two weeks of the results given by the election commission. And many people I spoke with here say it would be more like three weeks. And that's even optimistic. They need to get material out to the provinces. There's already snow in many areas of the country, in the remote parts. You know, there's this ongoing security problem here. And the Taliban and other militants have already made some inroads in to many parts of the countries.

There's also a fatigue factor. You know, you talk to Afghans, and they just want this thing wrapped up. Many of them took a risk, going to vote in the first place. And the outcome whatever it is will not likely be seen as honest. It's just taken too long and there was a sense of fait accompli, that Karzai was going to get in anyway. And certainly, if they can't get a runoff election done in time, it'll have to wait until the spring. And in the meantime, you'll have a political vacuum here and that's just not the, you know, the optimum situation anyway.

NORRIS: And in the meantime, are there solutions that are being considered?

NORTHAM: We're hearing more and more about a particular Afghan solution to this and that would be a loya jirga. And this is a gathering of elders and tribal leaders. It's a particular way of handling issues and that type of thing that they have here in Afghanistan. This is where all the key players would come together under a tent and sort it out over a number of hours or a number of days. The problem here is that many people feel like Karzai will stack the deck. He'll bring in all his own people - people that he has appointed, you know, local leaders and district councilors who will support him. And in essence, swing the decision towards him. At the same time though, it's widely assumed Karzai would win a runoff election anyway. So, this might just be a faster opportunity to sort out this problem of who has won the election, who's going to govern this country.

NORRIS: That's NPR's Jackie Northam speaking to us from Kabul. Jackie, thanks so much.

NORTHAM: Thank you, Michele. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.