Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai has been named as the next president of Afghanistan.
Afghanistan's election commission has declared former finance minister and ex-World Bank economist Ashraf Ghani president-elect on Sunday, hours after he signed a power-sharing deal with runner up Abdullah Abdullah.
However, the commissioner withheld final election numbers after a U.N.-monitory audit.
The announcement Sunday followed Ghani and rival Abdullah Abdullah signing a power-sharing agreement to form a National Unity Government, ending weeks of political bickering following a June 14 runoff presidential election.
“The Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan declares Dr. Ashraf Ghani ... as the president of Afghanistan,” commission chief Ahmad Yousuf Nuristani said.
Ashraf Ghani Named President-elect in Afghanistan, Voice of America
Ghani, now 65, was a career academic and economist at World Bank who left Afghanistan in 1977 and only returned 24 years later to pursue his dream of rebuilding the country.
He studied at New York's Columbia University, before teaching at several US universities during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. He worked with the World Bank from 1991, becoming an expert on the Russian coal industry, and finally moved back to Kabul as a senior UN special adviser soon after the Taliban were ousted in late 2001.
Ghani was a key figure in the interim government and became a powerful finance minister under President Hamid Karzai from 2002 to 2004, campaigning hard against burgeoning corruption.
Renowned for his energy, Ghani introduced a new currency, set up a tax system, encouraged wealthy expat Afghans to return home, and cajoled donors as the country emerged from the Taliban era.
But he also demonstrated a divisive character which earned him a reputation that still dogs him today.
Profile: Ashraf Ghani, Al Jazeera
The 14 weeks of intense negotiations about the election process, with deals made and deals backed away from, and the United States, the United Nations, and the two unelected candidates themselves negotiating about how the election would be decided, is fairly called highly irregular.
"The 12 July agreement reached between Dr. Abdullah Abdullah and Dr. Ashraf Ghani required that the two campaigns have joint oversight of the audit," said U.N. envoy Jan Kubis. "It is highly unusual for the parties in an electoral contest to be given such prominence in designing the procedures to audit its results or to have such a hands-on role in the actual physical auditing."
Afghanistan Presidential Vote Audit Hampered by Abdullah No-Show, Wall Street Journal
Now, in a final deal between the parties, the election results might be not be released, with just the announcement of who had won.
On Saturday, Mr. Abdullah’s aides said he would refuse to agree to the deal unless the vote totals were kept secret, since he regards the election as heavily tainted by fraud.
Critics of the election commission claimed that it had been pressured by the international community not to announce the results to get Mr. Abdullah back on board with the agreement.
Democracy advocates were aghast at the whole process, although American diplomats hailed it as Afghanistan’s first peaceful, democratic transfer of power.
Ashraf Ghani Is Named President of Afghanistan by Elections Panel, New York Times
Amidst finger pointing about whether and who, on the international side, had agreed that election results might be kept secret, a secret U.S. official says that the secret vote results are transparent.
Ahmad Yousuf Nouristani, chairman of the election commission, said the final ballot counts have been shared with both candidates and that the commission would announce the numbers publicly later.
A Ghani Ahmadzai supporter — Halim Fidai, a former governor — said Sunday that Kubish, the U.N. representative, told the commission not to release vote tallies. A U.N. official who insisted on anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly said the allegation was not true and that the U.N. was only facilitating dialogue between the candidates and the election commission regarding the release of the results.
A senior U.S. official said the vote result is transparent but may be released slowly over fears of violence. The official insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to be identified publicly.
Afghan election board says Ghani Ahmadzai won presidential vote, but keeps vote tally secret, Associated Press
This claimed transparency of secret vote results might be questioned.
In a move likely to trigger complaints over transparency, Nuristani gave no figures for the winning margin, turnout or the number of fraudulent ballot papers thrown out in an UN-supervised audit that checked every individual vote.
Ghani named next Afghan president, signs power-sharing deal, AFP
The democratic nature of the agreement might be questioned too.
Though the White House statement said that "respect for the democratic process" is the only viable path forward for Afghanistan, the next Afghan government to many appears to be more of a product of negotiations than vote tallies.
Afghan election board says Ghani Ahmadzai won presidential vote, but keeps vote tally secret, Associated Press
This political transition however cannot be called democratic, as it actually avoided democratic means to determine who won the election. It has just about been peaceful, although with ethnic polarisation in the voting and a lot of vitriol and upset on both sides in the aftermath. Despite the huge numbers of voters turning out, in the end, the deal to form a successor administration to Karzai’s was done behind closed doors and with huge amounts of foreign help.
Finally, a deal, but not yet democracy, Afghanistan Analysts Network
BBC explains the nature of the power sharing arrangement.
The new Afghan government will have a cabinet of ministers, including the CEO and two deputies, chaired by the president who will take strategic decisions. Day-to-day administration will be carried out by a new Council of Ministers, chaired by the CEO, and including all ministers.
One major issue that divided both camps was over appointments. Abdullah Abdullah won the fight to be able to appoint senior positions on terms of "parity" with Ashraf Ghani, and "the two teams will be equally represented at the leadership level".
But appointments further down will be "equitably" shared - so there will not be a one-for-one handout of jobs across the country. Ashraf Ghani is impatient to make major reforms, and has secured the wording he wants on the formation of a "merit-based" mechanism to appoint senior officials.
Afghan presidential contenders sign unity deal, BBC
The two campaigns will be equally represented in senior positions. Lower positions will be equitably shared, which is different than equally represented.
The new position for the second place finisher, or the second place finisher's chosen delegate, is variously described as Chief Executive Officer, Prime Minister, or Prime Minister-like. Whether the title is more like a company might have, or more like a country might have, might be contained in the contract.
The four-page power sharing contract says the relationship between president and chief executive — a position akin to prime minister — must be defined by "partnership, collegiality, collaboration, and, most importantly, responsibility to the people of Afghanistan."
Afghan election board says Ghani Ahmadzai won presidential vote, but keeps vote tally secret, Associated Press