Hamid Karzai

Hamid Karzai was sworn in today to serve a second term as leader of Afghanistan. I flashed back to an earlier article from the UK Telegraph.

I'm having trouble reconciling this:

The Abdullah camp said it would announce whether their candidate would pull out of the run-off at a 9.30am (5.00am GMT) Kabul rally on Sunday, but an official added: "We will not participate in an election which is not transparent and fraud-free."

Diplomats have told the Sunday Telegraph they estimate the chances of a second round proceeding to be less than half and falling.

with this:

Mrs Clinton said the withdrawal of a candidate would not be "unprecedented" and would not affect the legitimacy of the vote.

She said: "We see that happen in our own country where, for whatever combination of reasons, one of the candidates decides not to go forward.

"I don't think it has anything to do with the legitimacy of the election."

It just seems to me that it's rather easy to challenge the legitimacy of the result of an election which is neither transparent nor fraud-free. Kudos to the Telegraph for putting them next to each other in their article.