KABUL : President Hamid Karzai won the majority of votes in the Oct. 9 election, effectively securing his position as Afghanistan’s first popularly elected president.

Karzai, who had been widely expected to win, received more than 4.2 million votes –– more than half of the estimated ballots cast. Under the election rules, any of the 18 candidates must receive 50 percent plus one vote to win, avoiding the necessity of a runoff. The presidential term is five years.

Results posted on the Internet by the Joint Electoral Management Board, an Afghan and United Nations election commission, showed Karzai way ahead by Oct. 24 evening, with 94 percent of the votes counted. He had 55.3 percent of the vote. His nearest rival, the former education minister, Muhammad Yunus Qanooni, had 16.2 percent. The only woman presidential candidate, Masooda Jalal, was running sixth, with 80,922 votes, or 1.1 percent. Nonetheless, her showing was a landmark for a woman in Afghan politics.

Afghans turned out to vote in large numbers on Oct. 9 in their first presidential election, an event that was unexpectedly peaceful but was soon marred by 15 candidates’ declaring the election illegitimate because of what they said was widespread cheating and fraud.

U.N. and Afghan officials overseeing the election largely dismissed the concerns, saying they believed any problems had been corrected during the day. But the complaints cast a shadow on a day that Afghans have looked to after more than two decades of war and turmoil.

The expected threat to the elections –– attacks by Taliban insurgents who had vowed to disrupt the voting –– largely failed to materialize. The election brought to a close –– barring parliamentary elections to be held next year –– a process that began in November 2001, after the Taliban government was ousted. At a conference in Bonn, Germany, Hamid Karzai was named the country’s interim leader, and a series of steps were laid out to bring the country toward its first true national election.