Archived Document
Priority 5. Help advance Afghanistan’s capacity for democratic governance by contributing to effective, accountable public institutions and electoral processes.
As noted in previous quarterly reports, democratic governance is an overarching priority for Afghanistan, meaning governance that is transparent, effective and accountable.
Canadian Objective for 2011: By 2011, we expect that national, provincial and local institutions, particularly in Kandahar province, will exhibit an increasing capacity for democratic governance in the deliberation and delivery of public programs and services, and in carrying out democratic elections.
Canada supports the electoral process in Afghanistan by providing Canadians with technical expertise, and financially with partners such as the UNDP, the Asia Foundation and the National Democratic Institute. The two-month election campaign for the presidential and provincial council elections, the actual voting on August 20 and subsequent events were important steps in building democratic institutions and ensuring future elections that are credible, inclusive and secure.
Statistics suggest the magnitude of the challenge: 41 candidates for president; 3,324 candidates for seats on 34 provincial councils; accreditation of more than 280,000 Afghan and international election observers; and an estimated 15 million registered voters. The two bodies chiefly responsible for handling these challenging electoral operations before and after August 20 are the Independent Election Commission (IEC) and the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC). The IEC is an Afghan institution responsible for administering and supervising the election; the ECC adjudicates complaints and three of its five commissioners are appointed by the United Nations. In addition to pervasive security concerns, logistics challenges are formidable in Afghanistan, for example requiring the setting up of separate male and female polling stations, and the use of mules and donkeys to bring ballots to and from some remote regions.
On September 16, the IEC announced preliminary and uncertified results of the presidential race, suggesting incumbent President Hamid Karzai had garnered a little more than 54 percent of the vote, with nearly 28 percent going to his main rival, former Afghan foreign minister Dr. Abdullah Abdullah. Ten days later, the IEC announced preliminary results for the provincial councils in 30 of the 34 provinces.
There were major concerns about irregularities and fraud. On September 8, the ECC said it had “found clear and convincing evidence of fraud in a number of polling stations in each province investigated.” That evidence was either more ballots cast than the 600 initially supplied to the polling station or a return for one candidate of 95 percent or higher. It ordered the IEC to carry out an audit. On September 21, the ECC and IEC reached agreement on the process of auditing a statistically representative sample of ballot boxes from more than 10 percent of polling stations. By the end of September, the actual auditing had not yet begun.
Away from the central government, much remains to be done in building institutional capacity. As part of that effort Canada helped set up a meeting among key stakeholders to discuss reconstruction, development and delivery of basic services in the southern part of Afghanistan, including Kandahar City. Through this meeting, stakeholders learned about new techniques to improve revenue collection and solid waste management from counterparts in other parts of the country. Nevertheless, significant challenges remain, particularly at the district level. In a survey by the Independent Directorate for Local Governance, out of 364 such district administrative centres in Afghanistan, 318 have no electricity supply. More than half the district governors have no office and four of five have no official vehicle.
