An election to the office of President of Afghanistan was held on October 9, 2004. Hamid Karzai won the election with 55.4% of the votes and three times more votes than any other candidate. Twelve candidates received less than 1% of the vote. It is estimated that more than three-quarters of Afghanistan's nearly 12 million registered voters cast ballots. The election was overseen by the Joint Electoral Management Body, chaired by Zakim Shah and vice-chaired by Ray Kennedy, an American working for the United Nations.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]
The President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is the head of state and head of government of Afghanistan. The incumbent office holder is Ashraf Ghani.
Hamid Karzai is an Afghan politician who was the President of Afghanistan from 22 December 2001 to 29 September 2014, originally as an interim leader and then as President for almost ten years, from 7 December 2004 to 2014. He comes from a politically active family; Karzai's father, uncle and grandfather were all active in Afghan politics and government. Karzai and his father before him, Abdul Ahad Karzai, were each head of the Popalzai tribe of the Durrani tribal confederation.
Zakim Shah was the chairman or director of Afghanistan's Joint Election Management Board for the Afghan Presidential elections in 2004, and for the elections to the two houses of Afghanistan's National Legislature, the Wolesi Jirga, and Meshrano Jirga, in 2005. His duties including verifying that candidate qualified to stand for election. His duties also included officially announcing the winners.
After some accusations of fraud circulated on the day of the election, at least fifteen candidates declared that they were boycotting the ballot, but the boycott dissolved when the United Nations announced it would set up a three-person independent panel to investigate the charges of irregularities. The panel included a former Canadian diplomat, a Swedish electoral expert, and the third member was later named by the European Union.
Sweden, officially the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Scandinavian Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north and Finland to the east, and is connected to Denmark in the southwest by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund, a strait at the Swedish-Danish border. At 450,295 square kilometres (173,860 sq mi), Sweden is the largest country in Northern Europe, the third-largest country in the European Union and the fifth largest country in Europe by area. Sweden has a total population of 10.2 million of which 2.4 million has a foreign background. It has a low population density of 22 inhabitants per square kilometre (57/sq mi). The highest concentration is in the southern half of the country.
The European Union (EU) is a political and economic union of 28 member states that are located primarily in Europe. It has an area of 4,475,757 km2 (1,728,099 sq mi) and an estimated population of about 513 million. The EU has developed an internal single market through a standardised system of laws that apply in all member states in those matters, and only those matters, where members have agreed to act as one. EU policies aim to ensure the free movement of people, goods, services and capital within the internal market, enact legislation in justice and home affairs and maintain common policies on trade, agriculture, fisheries and regional development. For travel within the Schengen Area, passport controls have been abolished. A monetary union was established in 1999 and came into full force in 2002 and is composed of 19 EU member states which use the euro currency.
The date was originally set for July 5, 2004. The elections were twice postponed, first until September, and then until October. Candidates for president also nominated two vice-presidential candidates. Some candidates used this to balance their ticket with regard to Afghanistan's three main ethnic communities. If no candidate had secured 50% of the votes, a run-off election would have been held. This was Afghanistan's first direct election. In 1965 and 1969, there were legislative polls, but those elections were indirect.
Twenty-three candidates put their name forward for presidency, but five of them dropped out of the running by the time campaigning began.
The favourite throughout was interim president Hamid Karzai. Karzai ran as an independent, though he had the backing of several political parties, including Afghan Mellat, a social democratic party.
Abdul Rashid Dostum is an Afghan politician and general in the Afghan National Army who has served as Vice President of Afghanistan since 2014. An ethnic Uzbek, he is a former communist general and warlord known for siding with winners during different wars in Afghanistan. He is the founder of the political party, Junbish-e Milli.
A warlord is a leader able to exercise military, economic, and political control over a subnational territory within a sovereign state due to their ability to mobilize loyal armed forces. These armed forces, usually considered militias, are loyal to the warlord rather than to the state regime. Warlords have existed throughout much of history, albeit in a variety of different capacities within the political, economic, and social structure of states or ungoverned territories.
The National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan, sometimes called simply Junbish, is an Uzbek political party in Afghanistan. Its founder and leader is General Abdul Rashid Dostum.
Yunus Qanuni, who served in several prominent positions in the interim government, instead emerged as the focus of opposition to Karzai. Qanuni, a leading member of the Northern Alliance, had the support of Mohammed Fahim, an interim vice-president who was dropped from the Karzai ticket during the campaign. Qanuni claimed to represent the legacy of Ahmad Shah Massoud, as did several other candidates (including Massoud's brother, one of Karzai's vice-presidential candidates).
Younus Qanooni is an Afghan politician who was Vice President of Afghanistan. An ethnic Tajik, Qanooni is the leader of the Afghanistan e Naween political party and former Speaker of the House of the People.
Mohammad Qasim Fahim, also known as "Marshal Fahim"; 1957 – 9 March 2014) was a politician in Afghanistan who served as Vice President from June 2002 until December 2004 and from November 2009 until his death. Between September 2001 and December 2004, he also served as Defense Minister under the Afghan Transitional Administration.
Ahmad Shah Massoud was an Afghan politician and military commander. He was a powerful guerilla commander during the resistance against the Soviet occupation between 1979 and 1989. In the 1990s he led the government's military wing against rival militias and, after the Taliban takeover, was the leading opposition commander against their regime, who he fought against until his assassination in 2001.
Also running was Mohammed Mohaqiq. He was a leader of the Islamic Unity Party of Afghanistan, a minister under Burhanuddin Rabbani and Karzai, and had been a strong ally of Dostum. Mohaqiq criticised Karzai as a weak leader and pledged to unite conflicting factions and end the drugs trade. He faced widespread accusations that he committed war crimes during the fight against the Soviet occupation, subsequent internecine conflict within the Mujahedin, and later, against the Taliban.
Burhānuddīn Rabbānī was an Afghan politician who served as President of the Islamic State of Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996. After the Taliban government was toppled during Operation Enduring Freedom, Rabbani returned to Kabul and served as President from November to December 20, 2001, when Hamid Karzai was chosen at the Bonn International Conference on Afghanistan. Rabbani was also the leader of Jamiat-e Islami Afghanistan.
A war crime is an act that constitutes a serious violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility. Examples of war crimes include intentionally killing civilians or prisoners, torturing, destroying civilian property, taking hostages, performing a perfidy, raping, using child soldiers, pillaging, declaring that no quarter will be given, and seriously violating the principles of distinction and proportionality, such as strategic bombing of civilian populations.
The Taliban or Taleban, who refer to themselves as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), are a Sunni Islamic fundamentalist political movement and military organization in Afghanistan currently waging war within that country. Since 2016, the Taliban's leader is Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada. The leadership is based in Quetta, Pakistan.
The youngest candidate was 41-year-old Abdul Hafiz Mansoor. He was a member of the Northern Alliance and claimant to the legacy of Massoud. A journalist and former Minister for Information and Culture, Mansoor accused Karzai of trying to form an elected dictatorship.
The main candidate of the religious right was Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai, leader of the exiled government in Pakistan during the Soviet occupation. Ahmadzai formerly led a radical Islamist group which was active in the Mujahedin, and later in both the Taleban and Al-Qaida, but has since disavowed any links with them.
Abdul Satar Sirat held several ministerial positions in the early 1970s. Sirat later served as envoy for the exiled King and was initially voted leader of the interim government but stepped aside in favour Karzai.
Massouda Jalal, a medical doctor, was the only female candidate, although two women were nominated for vice-president (Nelab Mobarez running with Aasifi and Shafiqa Habibi running with Dostum).
Several candidates publicly supported women's rights, including Karzai, Wakil Mangal and, most prominently, the former police colonel Abdul Hasib Aarian. 72-year-old Abdul Hadi Khalilzai, the oldest candidate and a former teacher and religious lawyer, claimed to support women's rights "according to the Constitution, accepted Afghan tradition and the holy religion of Islam".
Latif Pedram, a journalist and poet, and Mohammed Ibrahim Rashid were strong advocates for the rights of Afghan refugees. Sayed Ishaq Gailani, a Muslim intellectual who fought against the Soviet occupation, stood to represent the Sufi Muslim minority. All candidates claimed to be able to build bridges between Afghanistan's various communities and factions. Ghulam Farooq Nejrabi, a paediatric physician and medical lecturer who called for an end to religious, ethnic and sexual discrimination, even claimed he could build bridges with the Taleban. Mahfuz Nedahi, who had served as Minister of Mines and Industry in the interim government, accused the other candidates of running on tribal or party lines and failing to offer a true programme of national unity, while Sayed Abdul Hadi Dabir, an amateur boxer and former fighter in the Mujahedin, criticised tribal nepotism in government appointments and called for a national Ulema to be formed as part of the elected parliament.
Campaigning and voting
Ballots contained the names of candidates, accompanied by their photo and an icon of their choice. Where appropriate, the icon was the symbol of their political party. However, most candidates ran as independents regardless of their party affiliation, and selected generic icons to distinguish their candidacy. In order to avoid voting fraud, voters dipped their thumb in ink after they had cast their ballot.
In Afghanistan, polling centres opened at 6am or 7am in different areas, and were set to close at 4pm. However, on election day, voting time was officially extended by two hours, but several polling centres closed on time before news of this announcement reached them.
Very significantly, over two million people voted among refugee communities in Iran and Pakistan, thanks to an operation conducted by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) through a remarkable logistic effort. In Peshawar, Pakistan, under the leadership of Stuart Poucher, a small team from IOM managed in less than two months to hire over 400 electoral officers, and over 6,000 polling officials, to conduct voter education for over 800,000 refugees, over half of whom voted.[9][not in citation given]
Controversies
During the campaign there were some rumours that the election would be decided by negotiation, as candidates bargained for promises of political position under Karzai or another candidate in return for dropping out of the race. There were rumours in September that Sirat and Mohaqiq had formed a pact with Qanuni, whilst Gailani and Aarian declared their support for Karzai on the last day of campaigning, October 6.
All the candidates except Karzai, Gailani and Aarian, publicly declared that they were boycotting the ballot and would ignore the results— effectively uniting Karzai's disparate opponents. Two major opposition candidates, the Hazara leader Mohammed Mohaqeq and the Uzbek strongman General Abdul Rashid Dostum, soon declared they had not joined the boycott.
Election fraud
A Joint Electoral Management Body employee, right, explains how to fill out an election ballot to an Afghan woman in the village of Raban
Significant fraud occurred in the 2004 presidential election, even though it did not attract the level of international attention as the fraud in the 2009 presidential election.[10][11]
On election day there were several claims that the ink used to mark voters could be easily removed[12] and that multiple voting had resulted,[12] as well as isolated reports of intimidation and campaigning at the polling centres.
Journalist Christian Parenti claimed that many people in Afghanistan were in possession of three or four photographic ID cards. He himself, not an Afghan citizen, could have easily voted. "One of the parties gave me two valid voting cards," he said "that I could add my photograph to and I could have voted if I wanted to."[13] Other problems reported by Parenti included lack of pens in polling places, not having enough ballots, and differences in closing times of voting stations.
The documentary film "God's Open Hand" by Ghost Studios exposes voter fraud. However, the film mainly focuses on the hopes and dreams of the Afghan people on their first ever Presidential elections.
In September 2009, Hamid Karzai, downplaying the significance of the fraud in the 2009 presidential election, said "there was fraud in 2004" as well.[14]
On September 3, 2009, when envoys from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and other Western nations met in Paris to discuss the recent 2009 Afghan election, UN Special Representative in Afghanistan Kai Eide said that the 2009 Afghan presidential election, widely characterized by rampant fraud and intimidation, "was a better election than five years ago."[11][15]
Violence
Rebels loyal to the former Taliban leadership had vowed to disrupt the election, accusing the United States moving to dominate the region. During the election process, five Afghan National Army soldiers died in skirmishes and due to landmines. 15 staff of the Joint Electoral Management Body were killed and a further 46 injured in various attacks.[citation needed] 2 International sub-contractors working in Nuristan in support of the electoral process were also killed.
Several candidates were listed on the ballot as independents despite recognised affiliation to political parties or groups (indicated in brackets).
Candidates marked with an asterisk endorsed Hamid Karzai on October 6, the last day of campaigning; their names remain on the ballot.
There was one female candidate (Massouda Jalal).
Ballots were all counted manually.
70% of registered voters voted.
Related Research Articles
The politics of Afghanistan consists of the council of ministers, provincial governors and the national assembly, with a president serving as the head of state and commander-in-chief of the Afghan Armed Forces. The nation is currently led by President Ashraf Ghani who is backed by two vice presidents, Abdul Rashid Dostum and Sarwar Danish. In the last decade the politics of Afghanistan have been influenced by NATO countries, particularly the United States, in an effort to stabilise and democratise the country. In 2004, the nation's new constitution was adopted and an executive president was elected. The following year a general election to choose parliamentarians took place.
This article gives information on elections in Afghanistan.
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Presidential elections were held in Afghanistan on 5 April 2014, with a second round held on 14 June. Incumbent President Hamid Karzai was not eligible to run due to term limits. The registration period for presidential nominations was open from 16 September 2013 until 6 October 2013. A total of 27 candidates were confirmed to be running for office. However, on 22 October Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission disqualified 16 of the candidates, leaving only 11 in the race. By April 2014 three candidates gave up the race and decided to support some of the eight remaining candidates. Opinion polls showed Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani as the front-runners and indeed the results of the first round election had Abdullah in the lead and Ghani behind him. The second set of results came after the run-off on 14 June, two months after the first round. Preliminary results were expected on 2 July and the final result on 22 July. However, widespread accusations of fraud delayed these results. In September 2014, the Independent Election Commission named Ashraf Ghani the winner.
Parliamentary elections were held in Afghanistan on Saturday 20 October 2018 to elect members of the House of the People. They had originally been scheduled for 15 October 2016, but were initially postponed to 7 July 2018, and then again to 20 October. Much of the prelude to the elections has focused on the debate over reforming the country's electoral laws. The current system is one of single non-transferable vote. Kandahar's election was held on October 27.
↑ Andrew North (July 24, 2004). "Afghan candidate list published". BBC News. Retrieved 2010-01-25. Zakim Shah, the chairman of the joint electoral management body, said 23 people had met the Monday deadline to register for the October poll.
↑ "Afghan presidential poll on October 9". Daily Times (Pakistan). July 10, 2004. Archived from the original on June 6, 2011. Retrieved 2010-01-25. But parliamentary polls, which were meant to have been held at the same time, will be delayed until April, Zakim Shah, the chairman of the Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB), said in an announcement on state-run Kabul TV.
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