Ashraf Ghani sworn in as Afghan President for second term, rival Abdullah holds parallel inauguration

Ashraf Ghani was sworn in as the President of Afghanistan for the second term at a ceremony held at the Presidential Palace in Kabul on Monday afternoon (local time).

The ceremony was attended by US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, US Charge d'Affaires Ross Wilson, and US, NATO forces commander Gen. Scott Miller, along with the ambassadors from the EU, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Germany, and Norway, as per a report by Tolo News.

Meanwhile, the Chief Executive of Afghanistan Abdullah Abdullah, who too claims to have won the Presidential election, also held a swearing-ceremony for himself on Monday.

Ghani was declared to have won a second term in February, nearly five months after the polls were held in September amid a record number of Taliban attacks intended to destabalise the election.

The preliminary results of the September votes were announced in December. Ghani was narrowly declared the winner while Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah got 39 per cent of a total of over 1.8 million votes.However, opposition parties immediately protested the result, threatening a full-blown political crisis on the cusp of a United States peace deal with the Taliban. The IEC conducted the assessments of votes and announced the results in February, declaring Ghani as the winner.