Even as questions of election fixing continued to swirl, Afghan election officials on Saturday failed to release preliminary final results, as had been expected, dpa reported. The Afghan Independent Election Commission (IEC), which has become the subject of pointed criticism since the August 20 election, reported Saturday that results from 92.8 per cent of polling places had been counted. Those results would give incumbent President Hamid Karzai a simple majority of the election with 54.3 per cent of the vote. His closest competitor, Abdullah Abdullah, had 28.1 per cent. Such a result would relieve Karzai of having to compete in a run- off election. But final election results cannot be posted until a series of accusations about vote fixing are cleared up. That could take months, say officials. Daoud Ali Najafi, IEC's electoral chief said in a press conference Saturday that the election body has set aside 2.15 per cent of the returns, accounting for more than 600 polling sites. He added that the result for the remaining 5 per cent would be announced on Monday. The UN-backed independent Election Complaints Commission (ECC) has already thrown out thousands of fraudulent ballots from polling stations in three provinces. It is likely to throw out still more. -- SPA
