Abdullah refuses to accept Afghan prez election result

The campaign team of Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah has said that it would not accept the results of the September 28 presidential election, which has been won by the current head of state, President Ashraf Ghani.

The 59-year-old Abdullah's campaign said in a statement on Sunday that the candidate's Stability and Convergence Team would not accept any results based on fraud, reports Efe news.

Election officials said Sunday that Ghani was on course to winning the presidential election, the results of which were delayed by months due to protests over allegations of electoral fraud.

The vote tally, released by the Independent Election Commission (IEC) and conducted nearly three months after the election, showed that Ghani garnered 50.64 per cent of the ballots cast, followed by Abdullah with 39.50 per cent.

Of the 1,824,401 votes considered valid, Ghani got 923,868 votes compared to Abdullah, who received 720,099 votes, IEC head Hawa Alam Nuristani said in a press conference on Sunday.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar finished in third place, with 70,243 votes, or 3.85 per cent of the total, the IEC said.

On September 28, only 2.7 million of the 9.6 million people eligible came out to vote, a very low turnout rate mainly due to continued threats from the Taliban and people's mistrust of the electoral process.

Of the total votes cast, 1.92 million were biometrically verified and of these only 1.8 million were declared valid by the commission.

Abdullah's campaign organization has said almost since the start of the vote count that some 300,000 fraudulent or suspicious ballots had been cast.

The preliminary results were initially scheduled to be announced on October 19, but the release of the tally was pushed to November 14 and then postponed indefinitely due to technical problems and interference by candidates in the process.

The delays were mainly caused by Abdullah's supporters, who decided to block the recount and audit of votes in seven of Afghanistan's 34 provinces.

Candidates have three days to file complaints about the results with the Independent Electoral Complaints Commission.

The final results will be announced after the IECC addresses all claims.