the BBC announced the vote boycott is collapsing but offers no details as of yet.
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Oct. 10, 2004. 01:00 AM
Afghan vote chaos 15 presidential hopefuls boycott ballot Say washable ink opens door to fraud
JARED FERRIE AND CAROL HARRINGTON SPECIAL TO THE STAR http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1097358613883&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan—This country's historic elections turned sour when 15 presidential candidates announced a boycott of the vote just hours after polling stations opened early yesterday.
The candidates, who are opposing Interim President Hamid Karzai, signed a petition stating they would not recognize the vote as legitimate because the ink to mark voters' thumbs and thwart widespread fraud could be easily removed.
Some contend the ink was a sham so that multiple ballots could be cast and the election won by deception.
"This was not a mistake," said presidential candidate Ahmed Shah Amadzai. "There is too much corruption in this election."
Voters throughout the country reported the ink, which was to ensure that voters cast only one ballot, could be easily washed off.
Election officials claim they caught the problem in early voting hours, but candidates said the damage is irreversible.
Karzai dismissed his opponents' complaints.
"Who is more important, these 15 candidates, or the millions of people who turned out today to vote?" Karzai said at a press conference yesterday.
"Both myself and all these 15 candidates should respect our people — because in the dust and snow and rain, they waited for hours and hours to vote.''
While voting in the capital, Karzai rubbed his thumb to show reporters it wasn't easy to rub the ink off.
At a polling station in Kunduz city yesterday morning, election official Nazeer Ahmad claimed there was no problem with the ink. But after voting, a crowd of men outside a polling station told a different story, thrusting their clean thumbs in the air to prove that the ink could be easily removed.
"It will create problems," said Noor Azam, who licked his thumb several times and rubbed it clean on his shirt. "People will go to another polling station and vote again."
Zamir Akhmad agreed, saying he knew at least one person who was planning to vote more than once.
"Three days before the election I talked to people with five or six cards," he said.
The vote is seen as key to efforts to turn Afghanistan into a stable country after 25 years of war and disorder.
Election officials said they needed time to assess how many people may have voted more than once, but downplayed the significance. They claimed the problem was discovered shortly after polling started and immediately sent warnings to their 25,000 polling stations and 5,000 polling centres. Ballot counting was expected to take days.
"It was nipped in the bud fairly quickly and I think the numbers were relatively small," said Reg Austin, a U.N. adviser to the election commission.
Several hours after polling stations closed, the Afghan ambassador to the U.S., Zalmay Khalilzad, congratulated the Afghan people for a successful election.
"The Afghan nation has spoken — it has voted for democracy and freedom," Khalilzad said in a press release.
Voting fraud was a central issue in the election, as the number of registered voters — 10.6 million — surpassed the 9.8 estimated eligible voters.
The joint Afghan-U.N. election commission's regional co-ordinator for northeastern Afghanistan said police had arrested one person in Badakhshan province who tried to vote twice.
Election officials were not clear about why the ink was removable, but they said in some cases workers may have mistakenly used the marker that was to strike ballots.
But Amadzai insisted the fiasco was preplanned and that the international community, the election commission and the government were attempting to rig the vote.
"We will not respect the candidate who wins this election," he said.
It is not clear how much credibility the poll will have after millions of Afghans realize their vote may have been rigged.
"If I learn that my vote today, something I was proud to do the first time in my life, wasn't worth anything, I'm never going to vote again," said Mojeeb Hashim, an electrician in Maimana. "I'm never going to trust politicians again."
Despite concerns before the election, security officials reported only one major attack during the day.
Taliban rebels got into a skirmish with U.S. troops that left at least 25 insurgents dead, and managed to kill three Afghan policemen accompanying ballots back to a counting centre after the vote.
WITH FILES FROM ASSOCIATED PRESS