AMERICA’S favourite, President Hamid Karzai, looked set for victory in the Afghan presidential elections yesterday as vote counting passed the half-way mark.

The latest tally gave the interim leader 58 per cent, leaving him well-placed to win a mandate without being forced into a second round run-off. He leads his nearest rival, Younis Qanuni, by more than 40 points.

No official results are to be announced until the count is finished next week, but electoral officials admitted that with nearly 60 per cent of the vote counted, the outcome was clear.

Mr Karzai’s cruise to victory comes as little surprise. He has been the favourite all along, due in large part to his incumbency and ethnicity. Mr Karzai is a member of the largest ethnic group in the country, the Pashtuns, and took more than 90 per cent of their votes.

He has served as interim leader for nearly three years, the Americans having picked him for the job at the Bonn Conference after the fall of the Taleban. He is widely viewed as the only candidate with national appeal, his opponents mostly picking up their support from narrow ethnic bases.

To what extent Mr Karzai can capitalise on his majority to implement reform remains to be seen. While sweeping the south and picking up votes elsewhere, he fared badly in the ethnically fragmented north.

Mr Qanuni, a Tajik and a former ally of Mr Karzai, is running second, with 17.2 per cent. Almost all his votes came from the resistance heartland of the Panjshir Valley, where Mr Karzai polled in single figures. Mohammad Mohaqiq, a Hazara commander, is placed third, with 8.5 per cent, comprising almost all those in his native Hazarajat in central Afghanistan. Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek warlord, came in a close fourth, with 8.1 per cent, courtesy of his clansmen on the Uzbek border.

“For non-Pashtuns the ethnic criteria was the most important,” said Hamayon Shah Asifi, a royalist fringe candidate who has taken less than 1 per cent of the vote. He predicted that Mr Karzai would have little choice but to bring several rivals into government for the sake of national unity. “Karzai has promised many times that there will be no more coalitions,” he said. “But I think a coalition is inevitable.”

It was unclear yesterday whether all of Mr Karzai’s rivals would accept the results or whether they might hold out on objections to win a compromise. Most seemed aware of their slim chances in the poll but took part for the political capital that goes with it.

They came close to scuppering the vote when they called foul over faulty ink that was meant to prevent voters from casting multiple ballots. Some candidates have also alleged ballot-stuffing in Mr Karzai’s favour. An investigation continues and results will be announced when it is complete.

Mr Qanuni said this week that he would accept the outcome. “I have made sacrifices for the national interests of Afghanistan and I am ready to make another sacrifice,” he said. “Observing the visible fraud in the election, and then respecting the national interest of Afghanistan, is a sacrifice.”

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