OTTAWA - Afghanistan's ambassador to Canada is accusing the media of "unwarranted pessimism" about his country's planned run-off election and he's chastising the diplomatic community in Kabul for a "condescending attitude" toward the fledgling democracy.
Jawed Ludin, who once served as President Hamid Karzai's chief of staff, is appealing to Canadians to cut Afghanistan some slack -- no country, he says, runs fault-free elections.
He concedes there was fraud in the Aug. 20 presidential election, but claims the extent was exaggerated by the media.
The vote "may not be up the standards you are used to, but it is the best that we can achieve at this stage," Ludin said during a news conference on Parliament Hill on Wednesday.
He defended Karzai, who agreed to the Nov. 7 run-off vote after pressure from several allies, including Canada.
But Ludin says the president disagreed with some of the methods used by the United Nations-backed election commission in its investigation.
The ambassador warns Afghanistan is at a crossroads and needs countries like Canada to rally around it in order to move forward and confront the burgeoning Taliban insurgency.
"My appeal is: This process should be treated very delicately," he said.
"In the next two weeks, (Afghans) have to support this process. We expect you to support this with us. The stakes are simply very high."
The U.S. is apparently leaning toward recommending that Afghanistan adopt a coalition government, but Ludin dismissed the notion and said a coalition would be "illegal."
Karzai agreed to the run-off election, which will pit him against his main rival, former cabinet minister Abdullah Abdullah, after evidence of widespread fraud and ballot-box stuffing was uncovered by monitors.
Ludin said some top Afghan election officials will be replaced, but side-stepped the question of what safeguards are being put in place to prevent a repeat of ballot-box stuffing and ghost polling stations.
It's suggested as many as 1.3 million ballots may have been cast fraudulently -- a figure Ludin scoffed at and described as completely beyond the ability of any candidate in the underdeveloped country to have orchestrated.
Last winter, international observers raised concern about the voter registration process.
People who cast their ballots in the 2004 presidential election and received voter cards were not required to re-register and only new voters -- mostly returning refugees -- were signed up.
Throughout last spring there were persistent reports that insurgents had registered to vote and in some cases acquired old cards from people who were either dead or had left the country.
Ludin said some "adjustments to the process are being made," but wouldn't be specific on how Karzai's government intends to prevent another fiasco.
International Trade Minister Stockwell Day, who chairs the federal cabinet committee on Afghanistan, praised the Afghan people who turned out at the ballot box last time despite militant threats.
Figures released Wednesday suggest the overall voter turnout in Afghanistan was abysmal, landing somewhere in the range of 39 per cent.
There are some Canadian municipal elections, such as Vancouver or Halifax, where the numbers were just as disappointing, Day told the special House of Commons committee that oversees the Afghan mission.
But New Democrat foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar was aghast at the minister's comments and accused him of ignoring the central issue, which in his opinion is whether Karzai will have any credibility, even after a run-off vote.
"There was massive fraud and clearly it benefited Mr. Karzai," he said. "That's who we are going to be doing business with and I think we need to take a look at that."
