Afghanistan and the 2009 Presidential and PC Elections.

Afghanistan is experiencing the 2nd round of the Presidential and Provincial Council Elections. 20th August 2009, was the day with a lot of hopes and fears throughout the country. Taliban had threatened that they would not allow people to go to the polling stations and cast their votes. Despite of all these threats, millions of people managed to get to the polling stations and they hoped that they would practice democracy in their social life.

Anti Government Elements managed to block roads and ways to the polling centers in many parts of the country. They attacked a district center in Baghlan and killed the district chief of police and wounding some others. They caused problems to people in some parts of Kunduz and around 12 polling centers remained closed to the people. In south districts of Ghazni province, most of the areas were inaccessible to voters due to threats by Taliban. Even in the districts of Waghaz, Khugyani, Qarabagh and Rashidan people couldn’t get properly to the polling centers.

Bamyan and Daikundi have been the provinces with reasonable turnout of voters. It seems that the overall turnout is between 70-80%. In Daikundi, Mr. Bashar Dust is the leading presidential candidate and in Bamyan the votes fluctuate between Bashar Dust and Karzai.

Continues…