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09/23/2005:

"Democratic disillusionment"

...But if the streets were vacant, so were the voting booths. In one polling station after another, voters dribbled through the doors. At a primary school in western Kabul, I found just one voter - a 70-year-old woman hobbling into the polling station, supported at the elbow by her son.
And at the Habiba high school, there were none. My footsteps echoed loudly in the empty corridors as election officials fidgeted beside vacant booths.

It seemed bizarre - Afghanistan was hosting a great party for democracy, yet it looked as though nobody had bothered to turn up. Figures released yesterday confirmed those suspicions.

Turnout was just 36% in the capital and around 53% across the country, the chief electoral officer, Peter Erben, said - a sharp dip on the 70% seen in last year's presidential poll.

Officials are pedalling hard to find comforting explanations. Mr Erben said the drop was normal in comparison with other post-conflict countries - even though, days earlier, he had handed me a factsheet predicting a sharp rise in turnout.

The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, also put on a happy face for a positive spin. He was "more than happy", he said during a roundtable press conference at his fortified Kabul palace a few days later.
guardian.co.uk