Regional
Atta Muhammad Noor threatens protest over dispute election
A powerful backer of Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah, Atta Muhammad Noor said on Thursday his supporters would launch street protests and occupy government buildings if they were unhappy with the outcome of a disputed election.
Atta Mohammad Noor, a supporter of Abdullah said there would be civil unrest if the audit did not throw out more than two million disputed votes, making Abdullah the winner.
Noor, governor of the northern province of Balkh, stopped short of calling for violence, saying the opposition movement “is not an armed resistance but a civil struggle for our people’s rights”.
“If our demands are not met, we will resort to the last option of seizing government buildings,” Noor told supporters in a speech.
Abdullah, a former foreign minister, pledged last month to accept the results of the U.N. fraud investigation as part of a power-sharing compromise brokered by the United States.
Some Abdullah supporters have called for renewed protests, or even a parallel government, if Ghani is declared the winner.