May 4, 2009, 11:28 GMT
Kabul - Afghan President Hamid Karzai officially registered with the Election Commission on Monday to stand for re-election in country's presidential polls slated for August.
The incumbent president appeared before the Election Commission Monday morning, naming current vice-president Karim Khalili as one of his running mates. But he replaced his other vice president, Ahmad Zia Massoud, with former defence minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim.
Around 60 people have obtained registration forms from the Election Commission, but less than a week before the 15-day registration period expires, only two other candidates have submitted their complete filing petitions.
Several strongmen, including Karzai's former cabinet ministers, who spent the past weeks in backrooms trying to form a strong coalition against the incumbent president, have so far failed to reach any consensus.
Gul Agha Sherzai, a popular governor for the eastern province of Nangarhar and one of the top candidates hoping to unseat Karzai, withdrew from the race after meeting with the president on Saturday.
Other influential men who saw little chance for their success in the vote met with Karzai's team in the past weeks, to offer their vote-getting influence and in return ask for posts in Karzai's future administration.
Although Karzai, who led Afghanistan since the ouster of Taliban regime in late 2001, has lost popularity at home and before the international community for his inability to curb the endemic corruption in his government, the political disarray has helped him to remain the strongest candidate in the upcoming vote.
Karzai, a Pashtun from southern province of Kandahar, chose his two vice-presidents from among the country's Tajik and Hazara minorities, the two largest ethnic groups after Pashtuns.
Both Fahim, a Tajik, and Khalili, a Hazara, took part in the country's struggle against the Soviet invasion in 1980s and were among the guerrilla leaders who plunged the country into a bloody civil war after the ouster of communist-backed regime in Kabul in 1992.
Fahim, the top leader of northern alliance, a group that fought the Taliban militants in the mid-1990s, served as defence minister during Karzai's interim and transitional governments. Fahim was left out of the cabinet when Karzai won the landmark 2004 elections.
Under the Afghanistan constitution, the upcoming elections were supposed to take place last month, but because of security fears in some areas of the country and logistic constraints, the vote was put back to August 20.
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