Recording suggest rampant election fraud in Afghanistan

Guardian:

Afghanistan's leadership crisis has deepened after one presidential candidate released audio recordings that he said captured a senior election official conspiring to commit large-scale fraud using the code word "stuffed sheep" to discuss illegally filled ballot boxes.

In 15 minutes of sometimes slightly surreal conversation, two men urge an official to fire election staff with suspect loyalties and replace them with known supporters, ramp up plans for vote buying and ballot stuffing, and close down polling stations in areas thought to be unsympathetic.

"Take the sheep into the mountain and bring them back stuffed," one man says, before apparently lamenting the growing cost of buying votes. "The price of goats and sheep has gone up these days," he says ruefully.

A campaign manager for former mujahideen doctor Abdullah Abdullah on Sunday said one speaker in that conversation was a close aide of the country's chief electoral officer, Ziaulhaq Amarkhil, although he refused to reveal the source of the recordings or offer any verification of the speakers' identity.

He claimed that the other man was from the campaign team of Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank technocrat and author of the book Fixing Failed States. Ghani appears to have a majority of votes in the 14 June run-off against Abdullah but is accused by his rival of cheating.
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This raises serious questions about the legitimacy of the vote count in Afghanistan and those responsible for it.  One of the reasons that Afghanistan is such a poor country is that corruption trumps the rule of law.  Until they stop that they will never achieve prosperity for the general population.