The third place winner in the elections state his vote is clean and only of the people, believing of course, he should then be granted his right place in the Afghan Presidency.
...The EU estimates focused on polling sites (click title to entry - thank you) where more than 90 percent of the vote went to a single candidate. Bashardost scoffs at the notion that he was pulling in fraudulent ballots, saying he lacked the bribe money or government officials willing to falsify his ballots.
"My vote is clean," Bashardost says. "It is absolutely a vote of the people."
During the election, Bashardost did have an advantage with one ethnic voting bloc. He's a Hazara, a central Afghanistan ethnic group whose people traditionally have been persecuted, and suffered several massacres during the Taliban era.
Bashardost's roots are in Kabul, where his father had a small automobile parts shop. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Bashardost made his way to Iran and finally to France. There, he lived for 22 years, earning a doctorate in political science and law as he published a book about Afghan constitutional law.
Returning to Afghanistan in 2003, Bashardost served briefly as Karzai's minister of planning in 2004.
There, he proudly claimed to have angered his ethnic Hazara constituency by rejecting their pressure to stack his bureaucratic appointments with their ethnic bloc. "I said 'I'm a minister of Afghanistan, not Hazarajat," Bashardost said...
"My vote is clean," Bashardost says. "It is absolutely a vote of the people."
During the election, Bashardost did have an advantage with one ethnic voting bloc. He's a Hazara, a central Afghanistan ethnic group whose people traditionally have been persecuted, and suffered several massacres during the Taliban era.
Bashardost's roots are in Kabul, where his father had a small automobile parts shop. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Bashardost made his way to Iran and finally to France. There, he lived for 22 years, earning a doctorate in political science and law as he published a book about Afghan constitutional law.
Returning to Afghanistan in 2003, Bashardost served briefly as Karzai's minister of planning in 2004.
There, he proudly claimed to have angered his ethnic Hazara constituency by rejecting their pressure to stack his bureaucratic appointments with their ethnic bloc. "I said 'I'm a minister of Afghanistan, not Hazarajat," Bashardost said...
