Afghanistan's first elections

[Red Squirrel]

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=151668

KABUL, Afghanistan Oct. 9, 2004 — Afghanistan's historic presidential election turned sour Saturday when all 15 candidates opposing U.S.-backed interim President Hamid Karzai withdrew in the middle of voting, charging the government and the United Nations with fraud and incompetence.

In the end, faulty ink not Taliban bombs and bullets threatened three years of painstaking progress toward democracy. The opposition candidates claimed the ink used to mark people's thumbs rubbed off too easily, allowing for mass deception.

Electoral officials rejected opposition demands that voting be stopped at midday, saying it would rob millions of people of their first chance to directly decide their leader, and the joint U.N.-Afghan panel overseeing the election would rule later on the vote's legitimacy. [...]

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