(10 Sep 2009) SHOTLIST
1. Wide of opposition presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah walking down stairs
2. Abdullah talking to reporter
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Abdullah Abdullah, opposition candidate in Afghanstan's presidential election:
"This is the stage when one has to focus on credibility of the process and how to help the process survive. And the process survives when the fraudulent results are out of, taken out and real results are coming, and the outcome is decided based on real vote rather than fraudulent vote. So, suspicious numbers we are not talking about. We are talking about hundreds of polling stations which were never opened, and votes have been reported from those and those numbers are included, which has taken Mr Karzai above 50 percent. So this has to be taken care of, this shouldn't be ignored."
4. Cutaway of reporter writing
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Abdullah Abdullah, opposition candidate in Afghanstan's presidential election:
"Of course there were fear and concerns, fears and concerns, about possibility of fraud or rigging, but the extent of it could only be realised when you look at it, when you just have a superficial look at it rather than investigate it. When you investigate it then you see that the whole thing was state-engineered and unfortunately in collaboration with the IEC in most cases."
6. Abdullah talking to reporter
7. Extreme close-up of Abdullah
STORYLINE
The top challenger in Afghanistan's presidential election on Thursday accused President Hamid Karzai of "state-engineered" fraud.
Abdullah Abdullah claimed Karzai had rigged the vote in favour of himself with the help of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC).
"The whole thing was state-engineered and unfortunately in collaboration with the IEC in most cases," he said.
Abdullah said the credibility of the country's electoral process must be salvaged by finding the "real results" of the poll.
"Hundreds of polling stations which were never opened, and votes have been reported from those and those numbers are included, which has taken Mr Karzai above 50 percent," he claimed.
His comments came as the United Nations-backed commission investigating fraud in the vote issued its first orders Thursday to exclude some
ballots from the final tally, throwing out votes from 83 polling stations in areas of strong support for Karzai.
The August 20 poll has been increasingly marred by reports of ballot-box stuffing and suspicious tallies.
A US monitoring group has said "large numbers of polling stations" had more than 100 percent turnout.
Karzai currently has more than 50 percent of the preliminary vote count.
But if the commission throws out enough votes, he could drop below 50 percent and be forced into a run-off.
The Electoral Complaints Commission threw out ballots at 51 sites in Kandahar, 27 in Ghazni and five in Paktika.
All three provinces are dominated by ethnic Pashtuns and are areas where Karzai, also an ethnic Pashtun, would expect to do well.
The commission did not say how many overall votes were nullified.
Throwing out ballots is a more severe step than ordering a recount, in which the votes could eventually be included.
The commission also ordered some votes to be recounted in Ghazni.
Decisions by the commission are final under Afghanistan's electoral law.
International censure of the vote has increased since Tuesday, when election officials released preliminary results from 92 percent of polling
stations showing Karzai with 54.1 percent, far ahead of Abdullah, who had 28.3 percent.
investigated and any re-counts are finished.
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