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Friday, September 23, 2005
Afghan elections
Remember Afghanistan? The place we invaded? Where we cornered Osama bin Laden, then diverted troops to Iraq before capturing him? Where our hand-picked president won an election last year? Where they had parliamentary elections on Sunday? Yeah, well, they gave an election and no one showed up:
But if the streets were vacant, so were the voting booths. In one polling station after another, voters dribbled through the doors. At a primary school in western Kabul, I found just one voter - a 70-year-old woman hobbling into the polling station, supported at the elbow by her son.
...Turnout was just 36% in the capital and around 53% across the country, the chief electoral officer, Peter Erben, said - a sharp dip on the 70% seen in last year's presidential poll.
This soldier points out that the election saw only "limited violence" due in part to nearly 100,000 uniformed security personnel patrolling the streets. His commenter, though, seems to not be able to work the Internets: "I looked high and low for news of the elections. I found a few short articles, and a cool video at BlackFive’s place." I guess he must have missed these 11,500 reports.
Dreams into Lightning offers this quote, which might be one disappointing answer to the question of the disappearing voters:
In remote villages of the southeastern Khost province, eligible female voters were avoided to go in polling station to vote for their destiny. Thus no women voted. Not even a single woman could exercise her begging rights. As women candidates was very less comparing to men but presence of women in polling stations were not much.
Bush, curiously, couldn't go two sentences without fudging the truth:
I congratulate the Afghan people and Afghan Government for today's successful parliamentary elections, which are a major step forward in Afghanistan's development as a democratic state governed by the rule of law. Braving deadly attacks and threats of violence, Afghans voted in large numbers for representatives to their new National Assembly and Provincial Councils.
1 Comments:
Not that the US is a golden standard or anything, but 53% ain't that bad
By 
Joseph Thvedt, at
4:44 PM
