20 August 2009: Polls now opening in Afghanistan

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Along with the ton of mainstream news coverage on this and the near inability of using online methods to find information, I probably won't be writing nearly as much on this as I did (and do) the election in Iran. I am hoping for an Abdullah Abdullah victory though, simply because it would be a nice contrast to Iran across the border - Iran had only four candidates and no women, Afghanistan has a few dozen along with a few women, Iran forced through a sham election in order to keep Ahmadinejad in power and is now facing the consequences of that, Afghanistan hopefully will elect a different president and show that even in Afghanistan they have more ability to elect their leaders than in Iran.

Apparently the final counting of ballots won't happen until 17 September, so no claiming victory a few hours after the polls close here. A runoff in the vote would happen in October. Very, very, very slow.

My favourite image of the election so far is this one - a donkey loaded with election supplies.

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