Credit: Reuters/Mohammad Ismail
Last Saturday, Afghanistan held presidential elections to determine who will next lead the country...or at least determine who would be on the ballot for the inevitable run-off elections. I had my concerns about violence and voter turnout. In the last elections voter turnout was reportedly low. There was also plenty of reporting leading up to April 5th that indicated that the Taliban was doing everything it could to prevent people from voting and to de-legitimize the elections.
Happily, election day saw a relatively low level of violence and about a 58% voter turnout. Not great, but also not bad for a country where ballots have to be brought in by donkey in many areas.
The day wasn't perfect, however, as more remote districts and districts heavily influenced by the Taliban saw an extremely low turnout. But to be perfectly honest, this was expected and I'll take what I can get in Afghanistan. The government had even closed about 1,000 polling centers, or approximately 1/8 of the places people could vote due to insecurity in those areas.
But as I said, this isn't a developed nation free of violence and 58% turnout is pretty damn good. This good news was improved when I learned two key Taliban leaders in the area that my section is focused on blew themselves up attempting to attack a polling center.
So now that April 5th is done and in the history books, I wait patiently for a few weeks for the official count to be announced...which as I stated above, will likely just lead to a run-off between two or three of the candidates; and who knows how that will go.
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