The main challenger to Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on supporters to be patient amidst “alarming” reports of “widespread rigging” in Thursday’s presidential election by pro-government groups and officials.

Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister, said, “The initial reports are a big cause of concern, but hopefully we can prevent fraud through legal means.”

He added that in places where threats from insurgents resulted in low voter turnout, his campaign has filed more than 100 complaints of ballot-box stuffing, inflated vote counts, and intimidation at the polls by Karzai partisans.

As the nation waits to see whether its second presidential election will produce a result that Afghans can trust, the allegations of fraud, combined with the slow pace of vote tabulation and the cumbersome process for investigating complaints, are raising political tensions. If the election result will not prove to be credible, there is concern that voter anger will unleash violence along the ethnic and regional lines that divide this fragmented society.

The election’s credibility is a major concern for the United States and other Western powers. Their citizens are tiring of a costly and protracted war against Taliban insurgents and are wondering whether to continue propping up a weak and corrupt government in Kabul after more than seven years of supporting Karzai’s administration.

(via The Washington Post)