A military advocacy organization says it's important that Afghanistan's upcoming presidential runoff election will be an open and transparent process.
With an eye on discouraging fraud, Afghan authorities plan to close thousands of polling stations ahead of next month's runoff election. They will also hire new poll workers. The way was cleared Wednesday for a runoff when former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah agreed to take part in a runoff with President Hamid Karzai. It came a day after Karzai gave in to pressure from the United States and accepted a U.N.-backed audit that threw out nearly a third of the votes he received in the August election. Brian Wise, executive director of Military Families United, says the key to establishing a lasting democracy there is a fair election. "It's important that the people of Afghanistan, first and foremost, have confidence that their elected leaders have been elected fairly and that the process has been transparent and open," he states. And Wise does not think President Obama should wait until after the election to decide whether to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. "If he does that, he's continuing to hold [in his hands] the lives of Afghan civilians, of American troops, and of our NATO allies...as they continue to die without the resources or the manpower that they need," he warns. Wise points out that Gen. Stanley McChrystal (USA) sent his recommendations to President Obama before the Afghan election results were known -- and those recommendations, he notes, were not based on the election results, but on how to achieve success in the war.
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