Afghan vote count over; Karzai wins

KABUL, Afghanistan – More than two weeks after Afghanistan’s first presidential election, vote counting wrapped up Tuesday and interim leader Hamid Karzai emerged with a resounding victory.

With his inauguration to a five-year term a month away, the U.S.-backed Karzai, 47, already is under pressure to ditch his coalition with powerful warlords and tackle a booming narcotics industry that has become a major economic force in one of the world’s poorest nations.

Officials declared the vote count complete Tuesday afternoon, giving 1,500 weary workers at eight counting centers a well-earned rest in the middle of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan. Investigators were still examining about 100 suspect ballot boxes, but the election’s chief technical officer said the count was effectively “over and done.”

Showing 98.4 percent of the votes counted, the Web site of the U.N.-Afghan election commission said Karzai had 55.5 percent of the votes, 39 points ahead of his closest rival, former Education Minister Yunus Qanooni.

An estimated 8.2 million ballots were cast in the historic vote Oct. 9, a turnout that U.S. and Afghan officials hailed as a nail in the coffin of the former ruling Taliban, whose threats to disrupt the election proved hollow.