Bar set low for Afghan parliamentary elections

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan —  In Afghanistan these days, the definition of success is sometimes merely the absence of calamity — a metric that may well apply to this weekend’s parliamentary elections.

Threats and intimidation are certain to diminish turnout in Saturday’s vote. More than 1 million voters in this nation of 32 million are being disenfranchised because they live in areas deemed too dangerous for balloting to take place. Thousands of phony voter-registration cards are known to be in circulation, raising the specter of widespread fraud.

The Obama administration has sought to dampen expectations in advance of the vote, perhaps fearing that either a major outburst of violence or a show of rampant vote-rigging would exacerbate already gnawing doubts among NATO nations about the aims of the nearly 9-year-old war.

In the weeks leading up to the elections for the 249-seat Wolesi Jirga, or lower house of parliament, the mantra from Western diplomats in the Afghan capital has been: “It’s not Switzerland.” The implication is that in a climate of such pervasive violence, if the voting is reasonably peaceful and the outcome even passably fair, everyone should heave a sigh of relief.

“These elections … are not going to be perfect,” Staffan de Mistura, the head of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, told reporters this week. But he added: “We are feeling that they are going to be much better than the previous ones.”

That sets the bar pretty low. Massive vote-rigging in last summer’s presidential election led an oversight panel to toss out about one-third of the ballots cast for President Hamid Karzai. The Afghan leader was ultimately declared the winner after his main opponent dropped out, but the contentious aftermath of the vote left a poisonous taint on his relations with the West that lingers today.

These are only the second parliamentary elections to be held since the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban movement in 2001. For some Afghans, the act of casting a vote is a right not yet taken for granted.

“I want to take part in this, and I want my family to take part; it’s important for everyone,” said Kabul businessman Amanullah Baghban, dapper in a suit and tie. “It’s up to us to make our decisions wisely.”

Others, though, declared disdain for the process, expressing disillusionment with last summer’s vote-rigging and ongoing corruption in Karzai’s government.

“The winners are already chosen,” scoffed Abdul Nasir Wojohat, a university lecturer. “I won’t vote.”

Any major public event here is shadowed by the fear of violence, and Saturday’s vote is no exception. Afghan officials and the Western military say they have uncovered a number of plots in recent weeks meant to disrupt the balloting.

On Thursday, in the latest in a string of such reports, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization force said a Taliban commander in Kunduz province who was planning election-day attacks had been killed in an airstrike, along with seven other insurgents.

Afghan officials said that nearly 300,000 police officers and soldiers would be deployed to protect just over 5,500 polling centers and sought to reassure people that it was safe to vote.

But the atmosphere has been nonetheless jittery. Over the last 10 days, there have been almost daily protests against canceled plans by a Florida pastor to burn the Muslim holy book to commemorate the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Another such demonstration took place Thursday outside a small NATO base in Uruzgan province; one demonstrator was killed when the crowd tried to storm the installation.

As the vote neared, the Taliban denounced it as a farce orchestrated by Americans and Karzai’s “stooge administration.” On Thursday, its leadership again warned people to stay away from the polls, hinting at planned election-day strikes.

“The Islamic Emirate has already chalked out certain measures … to frustrate this American process,” the statement said, using the name by which the Taliban movement refers to itself.

This will not be an election with a quick or clear-cut outcome. Even preliminary results may not be available until October, and final certified tallies could take more than a month.

The new parliament may not be seated until close to the end of the year, and because most candidates run as independents, it will not immediately be apparent whether the new chamber is dominated by supporters or opponents of Karzai.

About 2,500 candidates are vying for a tenth as many seats, making vote-counting a complex task. With a margin of victory in many races coming down only to a few votes, determining the outcome will be a “disputatious” process, said Johann Kriegler, a South African member of the Electoral Complaints Commission, which will resolve contested results.

Human rights groups have complained that the list of candidates was not properly vetted to weed out warlords and others affiliated with armed groups. And despite measures to safeguard the vote’s fairness, such as blackballing about 6,000 election workers suspected of taking part in fraud last summer, critics say the process is still highly vulnerable to vote-rigging.

“Following the massive fraud of last year’s presidential elections, we all expected that … the Afghan government and the international community would take serious steps to acquire people’s trust,” said Abdullah Abdullah, the presidential candidate who dropped out of the planned runoff against Karzai, claiming at the time that a fair vote was impossible.

“Unfortunately, sufficient actions were not taken.”

Election officials, though, made last-minute appeals for a second chance to regain public trust.

“The country and its institutions were disrespected.... The bad experience of last year must not be repeated,” Fazal Ahmad Manawi, the head of the country’s main electoral body, said in a message to election workers. “Don’t spare any effort to keep the people’s trust and the respect of our country.”

laura.king@latimes.com