Landmark Afghan Elections yet to Deliver a Leader

Preliminary results declared Ashraf Ghani as the winner, but he has been at loggerheads with opposition leader Abdullah Abdullah over the results of a second round of elections conducted in June.

Despite threats of violence and intimidation from the militants, turn out was high in both rounds of Afghanistan’s historic presidential election.

But the people are still waiting to find out who their leader will be.

Muddasar Ali, editor at Afghanistan's leading private news agency Pajhwok believes the stand-off will continue for many weeks.

“Both presidential candidates are not on a same wave length, Dr Abdullah is saying both parties could be part of a future government but Ashraf Ghani has said something contrarily to it, Ghani is arguing that why we did we have to have such a costly election process if there is no winner?”

Preliminary results declared former finance minister Ashraf Ghani the winner securing more than 56% of the total votes.

Opposition leader Abdullah Abdullah immediately rejected the results, claiming widespread fraud.

“We are the winners, we would never ever let a fraudulent person rule.”

This sparked widespread protests from his supporters and very uncertain days in Afghanistan.

It was the extended stay and prolonged diplomatic efforts by the US Foreign Secretary John Kerry that lead to an agreement between the two candidates.

Ashraf Ghani says they have agreed to a recount of the more than eight million votes and later form a government of national unity.

“We have committed to the thoroughest audit in the history of any election in the developed or developing nation, 100% of all the ballots will be audited.”

The elections commission has said it would try to audit the over 8 million votes within next three weeks, but with the current pace and the political bickering, it many say it will take much longer.

The delays have left Afghan voters disappointed.

Shabnam Ali, a high school teacher was part of the grassroots campaign for Ashraf Ghani.

“The election commission did announced Ashraf Ghani a winner in the preliminary results, this should have been respected, everyone should have waited for the final results and then complained any irregularities in accordance to the laws without creating chaos with wild protests.”

Supporters of Abdullah Abdullah are also unhappy with the lingering audit process.

Omer Amin is a businessman in Kabul.

“We voted with a great deal of enthusiasm but all that has lead to nothing, the audit process is too slow and the leaders seems busy negotiating power sharing deals.”

Senior journalist Muddasar Ali is optimistic that Ashraf Ghani will be declared the winner and be a good leader for Afghanistan.

“At the moment there are clear indications that Ashraf Ghani has emerged as the winner, looking at his past experience and affiliation with international organizations like the world bank one can easily conclude that Dr Ghani will be able to focus on developing Afghanistan's war ravaged economy, bringing reforms to the education sector and he has already evolved a plan for strengthen Afghanistan social sector.”

But supporters of Abdullah Abdullah – allege that Ghani has rigged the elections and won by cheating.