Karzai claims victory in Afghanistan, so does rival

As the polling stations in Afghanistan closed both President Hamid Karzai and Dr Abdullah Abdullah are claiming to be the victor. The official answer though will not be in for quite some time.

There is no official word and the election authority have told the candidates to wait for the final results before announcing a victory. The election authority will not have the official final returns until Saturday at the earliest. The authority now has the hard task of counting the votes of the polling centers. They were able to have 95 per cent of the centers that there were planned open. They have urged the candidates to wait until publication of the preliminary official results on September 25 before having victory parties. That hasn't stopped the campaign teams from informal counts. Abdullah's unofficial results show him ahead but they do not take into consideration the south and east of Afghanistan where Karzai is expected to do very well. Karzai's side is claiming the first returns have gone in favor of their man. BBC reports that Deen Mohammad, Karzai's campaign chief predicted that the president will stay in power.

"Initial results show that the president has got a majority," he told Reuters news agency. "We will not go to a second round. We have got a majority."

In pre-election opinion polls Abdullah had about 26 percent of the vote according to channelnewasia.com.

Boston.com reports:

"What Karzai's office is claiming is not correct. The result is in front of you. You can see Abdullah is ahead with 62 percent and Karzai has 31 percent," said Abdullah spokesman Sayyid Agha Hussain Fazel Sancharaki.

Afghan authorities were able to open 6,202 polling centers despite threats from the Taliban.