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Less than one week before the planned presidential run-off in Afghanistan on Saturday, November 7th, current President Hamid Karzai’s major contender Abdullah Abdullah pulled out.

Now it would be completely pointless to hold the run-off election on Saturday with just one candidate left. The run-off which was announced after President Karzai’s approval after he could no longer deny the fraud that had occured during the previous election, was meant to foster democracy in Afghanistan. Major obstacles were the lack of time to organize another election and the lack of security in large parts of the country which allows the Taliban to threaten potential voters.

Even before Abdullah’s pullout, it’d have been merely impossible to hold fair elections. Now,  it’s illusory. Even worse, it can further damage democracy in Afghanistan. A run-off with just one candidate deprives the new government of any legitimacy it could have otherwise, making it easy for the Taliban to attack it not only with weapons but by questioning its legitimacy.

It’d be fatal to allow Hamid Karzai to win a run-off election without any contender, but it’d also be just as bad to declare him the winner of the previous election ignoring that he committed election fraud.

The situation is extremely difficult, given the deteriorating security situation throughout Afghanistan and the corruption that has taken over in government departments and within the security forces. In my opinion, the best thing to do is to hold a new election in 2010 which would buy more time to improve the security situation before and put more staff on the ground to monitor the election.

Under current conditions, it is impossible to hold free and fair elections. Increased security and better monitoring by the U.N. are preconditions of elections that can put in power a legitimate government. Anything else would be irresponsible, including carrying out the run-off on November 7th.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 1st, 2009 at 10:52 AM and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.