Tentative Results in Afghan Presidential Runoff Spark Protests --- KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s already tumultuous election grew more perilous on Monday after the announcement of preliminary presidential runoff results that were rejected by the candidate Abdullah Abdullah, leading some of his most powerful supporters to call for protests and even the forming of a breakaway government. -- In releasing the preliminary results, which showed Ashraf Ghani roughly a million votes ahead of Mr. Abdullah, with 8.1 million ballots cast, the Afghan election commission cautioned that there was no winner yet, as millions of votes could be subjected to a special audit for fraud. -- But the caveat seemed to have little effect on many of the candidates’ supporters. After nightfall, Ghani backers went into the streets, unleashing celebratory gunfire in several cities. Some were already hailing Mr. Ghani as the president-elect. -- At the same time, there were reports that Abdullah supporters were demonstrating in Kabul, denouncing a “coup” by the election commission after his campaign tersely rejected the election’s legitimacy. One video posted on social media showed dozens of men, including police officers in uniform, chanting “Long live President Abdullah” and spraying gunfire. -- Both candidates, along with the Afghan government, the United Nations and the United States, have called for calm and restraint. But the question of what the ethnic cores of their political bases might do — largely Pashtun for Mr. Ghani, and largely Tajik for Mr. Abdullah — has loomed over the deepening political deadlock in recent weeks. -- The talks continued into Monday, and it remained unclear throughout much of the day whether the country’s Independent Election Commission would announce the preliminary results, which had already been delayed for days. The American ambassador, James B. Cunningham, and Jan Kubis, the United Nations special envoy for Afghanistan, took part in at least some of the meetings, officials said. --- The ballot total reported by the commission was around a million votes higher than the seven million votes it estimated in June — a figure that itself had immediately led to protests from Mr. Abdullah’s campaign, saying the total had been vastly inflated by ballot box stuffing and highly improbable turnout numbers in areas that had supported Mr. Ghani in the first round. In the weeks since, the process has been fraught with tension over Mr. Abdullah’s boycott and accusations of systemic vote-rigging. -- Though Ahmad Yousuf Nuristani, the chairman of the election commission, cautioned on Monday that “there is no winner yet,” the reaction to his announcement was swift and negative from many quarters. -- The Obama administration, which had remained mostly quiet about the election, offered a strongly worded statement emphasizing that the preliminary results were “not final or authoritative.” And it demanded that Afghan election officials “implement a thorough audit whether or not the two campaigns agree.” -- “A full and thorough review of all reasonable allegations of irregularities is essential to ensure that the Afghan people have confidence in the integrity of the electoral process and that the new Afghan president is broadly accepted,” said the statement, released by the State Department. --- In Monday’s announcement, Mr. Nuristani said that the Independent Election Commission, while tallying the preliminary results, had already thrown out more than 11,000 votes from 1,930 polling stations. About 60 percent of the disqualified votes had been cast in favor of Mr. Ghani, with the reminder cast for Mr. Abdullah.-- In addition, the two candidates had agreed that votes from nearly another third of the country’s 22,000 polling stations would be set aside for a special audit to spot fraudulent votes, Mr. Nuristani said. He added that it would be up to the separate Election Complaints Commission to conduct the inquiry. --- “None of the election commissions have any legitimacy for us,” said Fazal Rahman Oria, spokesman for Mr. Abdullah. “The result is informal by all means, and we do not accept the result.” -- His comments were mild in comparison to statements from two of Mr. Abdullah’s most powerful backers, both former warlords with large ethnic constituencies. Muhammad Mohaqiq, who is running as Mr. Abdullah’s first vice president, described the preliminary results as a “coup” against voters, and said it had given Mr. Abdullah’s team the “right to form the government.” -- Muhammad Atta Noor, the other former warlord, who is currently the governor of Balkh Province in northern Afghanistan, said in a separate statement: “Today’s announcement by the commission paves the ground for the next measures, from massive protests to the formation of a parallel government.” --- Secretary of State John Kerry responded to the threats with a stern statement, saying there is “no justifiable recourse to violence or threats of violence, or for resort to extra-constitutional measures or threats of the same.” -- “Any action to take power by extralegal means will cost Afghanistan the financial and security support of the United States and the international community,” Mr. Kerry said in a statement released Tuesday morning in Kabul. --- Mr. Abdullah himself has been careful to avoid inflammatory remarks about parallel governments or any other radical measures. His campaign said he would speak on Tuesday. - More, NYTimes, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/08/world/asia/afghan-preliminary-results-put-ashraf-ghani-ahead-of-abdullah-abdullah.html?_r=1