Since the victory of Ashraf Ghani over Abdullah Abdullah in the run-off to the Afghan presidential elections, there have been accusations of vote rigging, prompting a complete audit of the elections. Given this chain of events, some analysts are speculating that the outgoing president Hamid Karzai might not have lost his relevance in Afghanistan and could emerge as some kind of unlikely "kingmaker".
Let us examine this possibility.
After the presidential elections, I wrote that the unexpectedly high turnout was due to the desire to reject the emergence of two types of candidates. The electorate was rejecting the possible return of Taliban supporters and also any protégé of Mr Karzai.
I also explained that, despite the fact that both the front runners were former members of Mr Karzai’s government, they were the two most palatable candidates to the Afghan people, because they had distanced themselves sufficiently from Mr Karzai’s administration. They also had relatively clean reputations. These two were even deemed acceptable despite the fact that both had promised to sign the Bilateral Security Agreement with the US, an agreement that is not generally popular.
That Mr Karzai had steadily lost almost all popular support among the electorate due to consistent corruption, ineptitude and self-serving policies, is not only my view – it has fairly widespread acceptance now.
If my contentions are correct, how would it be possible for Mr Karzai to become politically significant once more?
The rationale supporting this contention flows like this: Mr Abdullah’s supporters have accused the Independent Election Commission (IEC) of vote-rigging. It follows that if the IEC is not independent, there is a possibility that the audit could be influenced by the present government. Mr Karzai could, therefore, emerge as an unlikely power broker.
Some analysts imply the possibility of a “deal” between Mr Ghani and Mr Abdullah brokered by Mr Karzai. Implicit in all this is the possibility of rigging the audit to suit the terms of the deal. In this scenario, Mr Karzai is back in the centre of the action.
But before going any further, let me explain why I believe Mr Ghani was likely to emerge victorious in the run-off, despite the fact that Mr Abdullah led in the May election contest.
If I am right about the electorate deciding that these two are the least unacceptable candidates, then it became relatively immaterial which of the two they voted for during the first election. However, in the run-off, when the choice was clearly between one of Tajik origin (although Mr Abdullah claims a percentage of Pashtun ancestry) and a Pashtun, it was always more than likely that ethnic loyalties would play the decisive role – the Pashtun are the majority in Afghanistan.
It is also my view that Mr Abdullah and most of his supporters were always conscious of the possibility that ethnicity was likely to influence the run-off and that protesting against the result was a political necessity.
But what of this question of Mr Karzai’s re-emergence? Even with all these factors at play, I doubt it would be possible for Mr Karzai to influence the audit. And if he attempted to, the result would be utter chaos across the ethnic divide. The Taliban would like nothing better than another period of chaos.
The fact that both front runners have agreed to accept the result of the audit, is not merely due to US secretary of state John Kerry’s threat of the withdrawal of financial assistance, it is the certainty that if the result of the audit is rejected by either candidate, the resulting chaos would allow the Taliban to re-emerge from the political shadows.
Since Mr Kerry’s last visit to Afghanistan, both camps of the front runners have been silent. There have been no further recriminations and even the protests over the IEC’s initial audit have been muted.
It is my view (perhaps a hopeful one) that both will accept the result of the audit. However, it is probable that, while an increasing number of votes might be declared invalid, it will not materially alter the result of the run-off.
In this event, it seems highly unlikely that Mr Karzai might find a significant place in the future political scene in Afghanistan.
Since both candidates have held positions of importance under Mr Karzai, at one time or the other, whichever is finally declared victorious, is likely to afford Mr Karzai some protection from reprisals from those Afghan who dislike him immensely – and that is a huge percentage of the Afghan population – but he is far more likely to distance himself from the shadow of Mr Karzai, if he wants to retain his support base among the electorate.
Brig Shaukat Qadir is a retired Pakistani infantry officer
