Five months on, Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani has been declared winner for the second term in his office with a slim majority, a result that threatens to provoke political unrest amid US efforts to clinch a peace deal with Taliban. The loser, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, has vowed to "firmly stand against injustice". He and the current Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum, a former Uzbek warlord have threatened to form a parallel government. According to election commission chief Hawa Alam Nuristani, after a vote recount and audit Ghani received 50.64 percent of votes compared to Abdullah's 39.52 percent. Her earlier announcement, in December 2019, she gave the same figure but Ghani's opponent had rejected it claiming the polls were rigged, triggering the second count. Given that in a country of 35 million people only 16 million were registered voters and of them only two million turned up to cast their votes, the announcement of final results should not have taken that long. But when it is all over, it is one's hope that President Ghani's opponents would try looking at the bigger picture as it emerges in the light of the United States' peace parleys with Taliban. It is unlikely that the Americans will carve out an option acceptable to Abdullah as they did in the wake of his rejection of results of 2014 presidential election by making him Chief Executive. He should realise that this election was held in forbiddingly hostile conditions. The Afghans voted in the shadow of the gun as the Taliban had raised the ante of severe violence against the electoral exercise and in 20 districts of four provinces polling did not take place. If for the Taliban it was a do-or-die challenge for the two million Afghans the election was crucial for a democratic Afghanistan. Allegation of vote-rigging is not specific to Afghanistan - we have it in Pakistan and elsewhere in many developing democracies. But that should in no way belittle or undermine the importance of this exercise in Afghanistan. The political opposition in that country needs to look forward to a peaceful Afghanistan which underwent violence like no other country in modern history. Simply said, it should swallow this bitter pill and join the peace process. There should be no turning back from the point from where an all-inclusive and lasting peace is clearly in sight. Should this presidential election, despite its many imperfections, receive political legitimacy - and it should - it could prove be the harbinger of a peaceful, prosperous Afghanistan.

The result of the presidential election has been described as "a step towards the possible talks with the Taliban," and in that President Ghani is expected to "act as a statesman and form an inclusive team to talk with the Taliban." He should open his arms to receive Abdullah and other political rivals; and they in turn should join the government on the negotiating table. And for this the United States too has a role to play - it should revive its contacts with Abdullah, reminding him of the part it played to get him installed as the chief executive following his electoral debacle. If the former inmates of Guantanamo Bay can sit across the Americans why can't Abdullah be part of the Ghani-headed government interlocutors at Doha peace parleys? For the first time in two decades the Taliban seem to be getting ready for permanent peace in their country with a sense of unvarnished commitment that was never there. Let President Ashraf Ghani's re-election be the beginning of a new dawn the Afghans have been looking for since 1979 when the Red Army of the then Soviet Union invaded this landlocked country.