KABUL, Dec. 22 (Xinhua) -- Presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah has rejected the preliminary result of Afghan presidential elections announced on Sunday as "fraudulent" and unacceptable.
"The leadership of our team is determined to fight for ensuring transparency in the election process to separate the fair votes from the faked one," said a statement of Abdullah's election team posted on his Facebook.
Announcing the much-awaited results of the Sept. 28 presidential elections, chairperson of the election commission Hawa Alam Nuristani told a press conference that incumbent President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani secured 50.64 percent of the votes and Abdullah Abdullah who got 39.52 percent of the votes in the election process.
Abdullah's team in the statement also noted that the team's leadership would soon decide about its next action in a meeting to be held later on Sunday.
More than 9.4 million eligible voters registered to vote in the presidential polls, but the turnout, according to Nuristani, was some 2.7 million votes and out of these nearly 1.9 million votes had been counted as legitimate and the remaining declared null due to alleged fraud.
The election chairperson also said the candidates and voters can register their complaints with election body within three days and the result could change after reviewing the complaints by the Election Complaints Commission.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of Hizb-e-Islami of Afghanistan, has bagged 3.85 percent of the votes and thus secured third positions while the remaining 11 candidates had secured few thousands of votes, less than 2 percent of the nearly 1.9 million votes.
Afghanistan's fourth presidential election since the collapse of Taliban regime in 2001 was held on Sept. 28 and the preliminary result was supposed to come out on Oct. 19, but due to complaints over alleged fraud and recounting of votes in some polling centers was announced on Sunday.
