A delay could create a power vacuum in Afghanistan and the volume of allegations could foment violence if people feel they have been cheated.
Yesterday, an election official was attacked in the south. Gunmen on motorbikes drove up to the home of the second-highest electoral official in Kandahar Province and shot him as he walked out of his front gate to go to work, said Mohammad Samimi, a spokesman for the provincial electoral commission.
Sharafuddin, who only goes by one name, was seriously wounded and is being treated in a military hospital, he said.
Sharafuddin was the operations manager for the provincial commission, meaning he was in charge of the logistics of how polling stations would operate and how ballots would be handled.
Partial results of the vote show President Hamid Karzai leading with 46.2 percent of votes, and top challenger Abdullah Abdullah with 31.4 percent. The count is based on votes from 35 percent of the country’s polling stations. Karzai will need to reach 50 percent of the votes to avoid a two-man run-off.
Polls had favored Karzai to win the election, though not necessarily in a single round. Karzai’s popularity has waned in recent years. He also has been criticized for recruiting former warlords to gain the votes they control.
One of the most controversial of these, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek warlord, flew into Afghanistan shortly before election day to show his support for Karzai, a representative said.
“The purpose of his coming to Afghanistan was to participate in the election and to support Karzai,’’ said Sayed Noorullah Sadat, the chief of Dostum’s political party.
Dostum is alleged to have been responsible for the deaths of up to 2,000 Taliban prisoners early in the Afghan war.
The independent Electoral Complaints Commission has received more than 2,000 allegations of fraud and intimidation on voting day or during the subsequent counting of ballots, said Nellika Little, a spokeswoman for the group.
Of those, 567 have been deemed serious enough to affect the outcome of the poll if proved true, Little said.
