OFFICIAL CAMPAIGNING for Afghanistan’s presidential election began yesterday with an opinion poll revealing that support for Hamid Karzai, the incumbent, has slumped in the 4½ years since he became the country’s first democratically elected leader.
As many of the 41 candidates began plastering Kabul with posters yesterday, what is likely to be the only opinion poll of the campaign showed that much of the shine has been rubbed off Mr Karzai by years of government mismanagement and corruption.
According to the poll of 3,200 Afghans, Mr Karzai can expect to receive 33 per cent of the vote – well below the half of all votes required to win the first round of the election, on August 20th. In the last election, in 2004, Mr Karzai won 54 per cent.
More alarmingly for the president, his support in the south, the heartland of the dominant Pashtun people and his power base, has dropped sharply since 2004, according to the opinion poll conducted by the International Republican Institute, an independent organisation that promotes democracy and receives funding from the US government.
Nationwide, 50 per cent of Pashtuns questioned said they voted for Mr Karzai last time, but only 26 per cent supported him now.
Despite the confirmation of Mr Karzai’s unpopularity, his opponents did worse. Of his two most formidable opponents, Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister, was picked by 7 per cent of people, while Ashraf Ghani, a former finance minister, was supported by 3 per cent.
The two men will take comfort from the fact that the polling was conducted in the first half of last month, when only Mr Karzai had declared himself as a candidate.
Nonetheless, the conventional wisdom among foreign diplomats in Kabul is that, in a country of widespread illiteracy and deep-rooted tribal and ethnic loyalties, most voters will cast their ballots for whoever they are told to vote for by community leaders.
Mr Karzai is therefore thought to be the most likely to win, after he obtained the support of most of the country's important powerbrokers. – ( Guardianservice)
