While the Afghan Electoral Commission gives incumbent President Hamid Karzai a clear lead with 54% of tallied votes in his faovr, his main rival, Abdullah, with just 28%, has cited widespread fraud in the elections His claims were fortified by the concerns shown by European Union’s monitors and US observers.

It’s still feared that over 600 cases of fraud and rigging were of such a serious nature that it could effect the outcome of elections and put the legality of these elections to jeopardy. It’s now that Electoral Complaints Commission has annuled part of the votes from various polling stations on grounds of fraud and rigging.

The officials of this commission say, “There are clear and satisfactory evidence” regarding the rigging of ballots. These votes include 27 polling stations from Kunduz province, 51 polling stations from Kandahar, and 5 polling stations in Paktika province. This is the first time that part of the cast ballots of August 20 Elections is annuled officially by the Election Commission.

Only to be held for the second time in Afghanistan, Presidential Democratic Elections were marred by hue and cry of mass fraud and rigging by the supporters of incumbent President Hamid Karzai. On many occassions he was directly accused of being involved in such cases.

His top opponent, former Foreign Minister Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, called him “Fraud” and “Criminal” citing many evidences of fraud. Abdulllah Abdullah also produced to the media a video of alleged rigging by Election officers. In his first reaction to the declaration of 91% counted votes, Abdullah had called the Independent Election Commissoin “supporter” of Karzai and “not independent” in its functions.

Electoral Complaints Commission has not made it clear as to how many votes will be annuled but officials say that each of the 25450 plling stations all over the country contained about 600-700 ballots. Final results couldn’t be expected as soon as all the complaints are addressed and a proper final count is made which unexpectedly could take another month.

The first reports of annulment of votes come in a time when a clear indication has been given to the world that Karzai has enough votes to avoid a secound round of elections and even if the rest 9% votes are termed rigged, Karzai’s position will remain strong enough to take oath of his office for a second and final term in his lifetime.

Initially the Elections were praised by all stakeholders and everyone was, in fact, very happy as Taliban hadn’t been able to hinder it to a large extent. Now, the biggest question for the world community particularly to the US is on how to design a working relationship with President Karzai since their relations has deteriorated in the recent days.