Afghan President Hamid Karzai has secured another five-year term in power, after election officials called off a high-profile runoff election that was supposed to take place within days.
Independent Election Commission Chairman Azizullah Lodin announced that without the Nov. 7 runoff, Karzai would be declared the victor.
"His excellency Hamid Karzai, who has won the majority of votes in the first round and is the only candidate for the second round, is declared by the Independent Election Commission as the elected president of Afghanistan," Lodin said.
The Obama administration quickly sent its congratulations to the Afghan leader, who has led his country since U.S. forces entered Afghanistan in 2001.
"We congratulate President Karzai on his victory in this historic election and look forward to working with him" to support reform and improve security, the U.S. Embassy said in a statement. Britain and the United Nations issued similar congratulatory statements on Monday.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that Afghanistan had been "through a difficult election process" and had to learn from its mistakes.
"Afghanistan now faces significant challenges and the new president must move swiftly to form a government that is able to command the support of both the Afghan people and the international community," Ban said during a visit to Kabul on Monday.
Crisis ends
The country had been mired in a political crisis since the Aug. 20 presidential election, as Afghans waited for official results to determine who won the vote.
The controversial runoff was finally called in October after a UN-backed panel had to throw out nearly one-third of the ballots cast in favour of Karzai during the Aug. 20 vote because of fraud.
After the ballots were discounted, Karzai did not have enough votes to avoid a runoff against his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, who previously served as Afghanistan's foreign minister.
Karzai and Abdullah each agreed to take part in the runoff after it was called in October, but on Sunday, the former foreign minister said he would not take part in the secondary vote because he believed it would not be free or fair.
Abdullah had made several demands regarding the runoff, including a demand that Lodin step aside from his position as head of the election commission. He also wanted changes to several ministries and a power-sharing deal between himself and Karzai. But his demands were not met.
Fazel Sancharaki, an Abdullah spokesperson, said Karzai's main challenger would give his reaction in a speech on Tuesday.
"We expected that this commission would announce something like this because the commission has never been independent and has always supported President Karzai," Sancharaki said.
Other challenges
The fact that Karzai will not have to face a runoff vote has made it hard for Afghans to defend the legitimacy of his position.
But even if the runoff vote had taken place, it was expected that it would be a challenge to get Afghans to return to the polls, CTV's South Asia Bureau Chief, Janis Mackey Frayer, explained Monday.
"The majority of Afghans had absolutely no appetite to go to the polls again," Frayer told CTV's Canada AM from Kabul.
"It's a risky venture here. There was a lot of violence in the days leading up to the Aug. 20 vote and there has certainly been a lot of violence in the past week, with the expectation of a runoff vote this Saturday."
Runoff organizers were dealing with continued threats of violence from Taliban militants, who last week attacked a UN guest house where election officials had been staying.
Frayer said there was an expectation that "voter turnout would be even dismally lower than it was for the Aug. 20 vote," when two-thirds of eligible voters failed to show at the polls.
With files from The Associated Press
