A woman activist famous for standing up to powerful warlords has won a seat in Afghanistan's first parliament in more than 30 years, according to early results released Thursday.
Malalai Joya, 27, took the second most ballots in western Farah province after the September 18 parliamentary elections, the Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) said, releasing the first provisional figures.
Joya rose to prominence two years ago when she dared to criticise mujahedin leaders and powerful warlords at a grand council meeting, called a Loya Jirga, called to debate a new constitution.
Her outburst was unusual in the conservative country in which women were removed from public life under the hard-line Islamic Taleban regime that was ousted in late 2001.
JEMB head Peter Erben released the results for Farah and Nimroz provinces, which are pending a five-day complaints period, and said the ballot count for the country's other 32 provinces had been completed.
About 60 percent of the results had also been audited while investigations were continuing into ballot boxes put in quarantine because of suspected fraud, including ballot stuffing, he said.
"Over the coming week we expect to gradually release the provisional result for the other provinces as we finish our careful audit, and the count and review of the quarantined boxes," Erben told reporters.
The final results were expected by the end of the month, he said.
According to the JEMB's website, warlords and former Taleban dominate initial counting in some areas, leading to concern the new parliament could become mired in the old power struggles that have broken down the destitute nation.
The new parliament, the first since 1969, would likely be a chaotic body made up of all the "same old faces", said analyst Joanna Nathan from the International Crisis Group.
"This is an election of individuals and in such a system it became all about name recognition. You see all the same old faces coming back," Nathan said.
Political parties were disallowed and the nearly 5,800 candidates for the parliament and 34 provincial councils ran as individuals, presenting voters with a bewildering array of names squeezed onto two newspaper-sized ballot papers.
The winners are likely to include warlords accused of atrocities during Afghanistan's decades of civil war, and members of the Taleban regime whose years of brutal rule were ended by a US-led campaign four years ago.
"There has been no will by the Karzai administration and its international backers to tackle the abuses of the past," Nathan said.
Security experts have also warned of potential violence after the results are known because of a so-called "assassination clause". This states that if a candidate cannot take his position for any reason, the person with the next number of votes will take his place.
There has already been one killing since the election: a candidate who was in the top three in the count in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif was killed last week. Seven were killed in the run-up to the polls.
But JEMB spokesman Aleem Siddique said the limited unrest before the poll, which the Taleban vowed but failed to disrupt, boded well for the next stage of the process.
"We hope the candidates will demonstrate the same dignity that the voters demonstrated on polling day by accepting the outcome of these election results," he said.
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