Ashraf Ghani, Afghanistan's former finance minister, was declared the winner of the country's contested presidential election Sunday, signaling President Hamid Karzai's departure from office and a security agreement allowing American soldiers to remain in the country into 2015, The Washington Post reported on Monday.
Ghani, 65, will become Afghanistan's second president since the collapse of the Taliban in 2001, and will face the constant threat of Islamist militancy, severe budget constraints that threaten to bankrupt the government and rampant public corruption.
But before he was declared the winner in Afghanistan's year-long election process, Ghani agreed to share power with the second-place finisher, Abdullah Abdullah. The deal has been a top priority of the Obama administration and it calls for Ghani to name Abdullah, 54, the country's chief executive when the inauguration is held.
But there is already skepticism as to whether the men, who had bad blood between them, can lead a country together that has a long history of violence and ethnic tension.
Independent Election Commission chairman Ahmad Yousuf Nuristani acknowledged deep flaws in Afghanistan's election process and said the U.N. audit could not sort out all of it, The Huffington Post reported.
Despite issues with the election process, he said that based on the final vote numbers, the commission had a responsibility to declare a victor.
"The Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan declare Dr. Ashraf Ghani Ahmad as the president of Afghanistan," Nuristani said.
Afghani nationals first flooded to the polls in April to choose one of eight candidates who were running to complete the country's first democratic transition of power from one elected government to another.
President Obama plans to pull all U.S. armed forces out of Afghanistan by the end of 2016, but the United States is expected to continue to spend $5 billion to $8 billion per year in Afghanistan for the next decade or more.
The United States was also one of 14 countries responsible for footing the $147 million bill for the Afghan election and recount.
