By DPA,
Kabul : Two top election officials, accused of vote-rigging in last year’s presidential polls, resigned Wednesday after President Hamid Karzai accused Western embassies of threatening and bribing them.
Azizullah Ludin, the chairman of the Afghan Independent Election Commission (IEC) and Daoud Ali Najafi, the commission’s chief electoral officer, have stepped down from their posts and Karzai accepted their resignations, Waheed Omar, the chief presidential spokesman, told a press conference.
“In the near future, the president will appoint new people to their posts after considerations and necessary consultations,” he said.
Karzai’s opponents, including his main challenger Abdullah Abdullah, and some Western officials had accused the Karzai-appointed IEC members of bias towards the president during the Aug 20 polls.
In an unprecedented speech to the IEC last week, Karzai blamed some Western officials and their embassies in Kabul for tampering with election results in bid to weaken his government. He said some Western officials tried to bribe and threaten the commission members.
He singled out US diplomat Peter Galbraith, the former deputy of the UN envoy in Afghanistan, and French General Philippe Morillon, head of the European Union’s vote monitoring mission, saying they were complicit in vote-rigging.
He accused Galbraith of threatening Najafi if Karzai was announced the winner. He said the US diplomat told the official that “you are digging your own grave yourself, meaning that ‘I will kill you’.”
During the controversial election, Galbraith, who accused his boss of covering up the fraud, was sacked by the UN secretary general, while Morillon, who had said 1.5 million votes were fraudulent, left the country before the final result was announced.
Karzai was finally declared winner after Abdullah, his main opponent, dropped out of a planned run-off.
Western officials in Kabul have said that the doubts over the sincerity of the IEC’s top officials have pushed donor countries to threaten the government with not funding the parliamentary elections until a “major reshuffle” in the leadership of IEC had taken place.
The parliamentary elections were postponed from May to Sep 18 due to lack of funding and security concerns.