- Abdullah Abdullah faces Ashraf Ghani in the runoff Saturday
- No candidate secured more than 50% of votes
- Final runoff results will be announced on July 22
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Afghans head to the polls Saturday to pick a President in a runoff between former foreign and finance ministers.
No candidate won enough votes to secure outright victory in the first round of the Afghanistan presidential poll, the election commission said last month.
The runoff is between the two finalists, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah and former Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani, the two candidates who received the highest number of votes.
In the first-round, in which around 7 millions Afghans voted on April 5, Abdullah secured 45% of the vote, while Ghani got 31.6%. A candidate needs to receive more than 50% of the votes to win the first round and avoid a runoff.
The final runoff results will be announced on July 22, the election commission said.
It's the third election since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, and is set to be the first democratic transfer of power in the fragile, war-torn country.
Abdullah was a vocal critic of the Taliban during their years in power. Although he was once an ally of incumbent President Hamid Karzai, serving in his government as foreign minister, he has in later years become an opponent.
He challenged Karzai in the 2009 election but dropped out after the first round to protest what he said was large-scale voting fraud.
Ghani is a former academic and U.S. citizen who gave up his passport to run for the Afghan presidency in 2009. He worked as an adviser to Karzai and also as finance minister in his Cabinet.
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