President Hamid Karzai won an absolute majority in Afghanistan's presidential election, according a final preliminary result released by the election commission on Wednesday according to dpa. Incumbent Karzai won 54.6 per cent of the vote in the August 20 poll, nearly double the 27.8 per cent of his nearest rival, Abdullah Abdullah, the commission said. Voter turnout was 38.7 per cent. The announcement came after European Union election monitors said that up to 1.5 million votes, one quarter of all ballots, had been manipulated or were suspected of having been subjected to tampering. The UN-backed Election Complaints Commission (ECC) has ordered a review of almost one in every 10 polling stations where turnout was unusually high, or one candidate got almost all the votes. ECC chief Grant Kippen said Monday the Afghan elections commission must not release an official final results before the ECC finishes investigating the more than 2,000 complaints it received. This could take weeks, according to the ECC. In total, 5.5 million votes were cast in the August 20 presidential polls. -- SPA
