KABUL (Pajhwok): The Stability and Partnership electoral ticket, led by presidential candidate Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, on Thursday warned of launched a new wave of protests if fraudulent votes were not invalidated within next three days.
Enayatullah Babar Farahmand, first vice-presidential candidate of Dr. Abdullah, told a press conference here that the Independent Election Commission (IEC) should keep its independence and invalidate fraudulent votes.
He voiced on people to join protests of vote recount and audit boycott and said, “We are waiting for the IEC to invalidate rigged votes, if it did not do so within three days, we will start a new phase of deterrent movements.”
The new warning from the Stability and Partnership comes after a number of candidates, including Abdullah, opposed the vote recount process in Panjsher, Faryab, Sar-i-Pul, Jawzjan, Takhar, Badakhshan and Baghlan provinces.
Farahmand said their demand for invalidation of ‘three types of fraudulent votes’ was yet to be accepted by the IEC.
Abdullah’s team wants over 137,000 quarantined votes, over 102,000 votes cast out of time and votes of over 2,400 polling stations which lack biometric data, to be invalidated.
The vice presidential candidate said their team waited for 13 days so the IEC could decide about these votes, but the commission did not respond during the period. “If the fake votes are removed from the system, the percentage of Abdullah’s team will be over 51.9”, he added.
Farahmand said the IEC was under pressure from Ashraf Ghani’s team and could not decide independently and that was the reason it could not invalidate fraudulent votes.
Pointing to closure of IEC’s provincial offices in seven provinces, he said that the offices were shut by people and they supported the move.
He said Afghan security forces mistreated protestors in Baghlan province and security forces should not be used against public.
On the other hand, Asadullah Saadati, second vice-president candidate of Abdullah, said that people were tired of election fraud.
About latest expressions of Minster of Defense Asadullah Khalid, he said discussing election was not MoD job and Defense forces should be used for defending the country’s soil.
Two days back, Khalid said Afghan security forces would not allow anyone to resort violence post-election and the Afghans would not accept a peace deal leading to another war.
Pointing to protests, Saadati said their protests would not be for another National Unity Government but for removing rigging in the election process.
Meanwhile, Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum told the gathering over the telephone that the country was country heading to “a very dangers crisis.”
He said, “I will accept martyrdom but not injustice by force.” He stressed separation of fake and genuine votes and said only biometric votes should be counted.
Dostum said they were tired of the issue and urged the Presidential Palace and IEC not to further test their patience in this regard.
On the other hand, IEC acting spokesman Zabiullah Sadat termed the vote recount and audit process as an important. He urged the three electoral teams to allow the IEC to finish the vote recount and audit process.
On November 9, the electoral panel started the audit and recount of votes from 8,255 of the 26,580 polling stations to sift fraudulent ballots from valid ones.
The move has drawn opposition from several candidates including Dr. Abdullah Abdullah and GulbadinHekmatyar.
A number of other candidates also said that they would not accept the result of the election because they say the election was massively rigged.
Presidential election was held on September 28. Earlier the IEC had given October 19 the date for announcement of preliminary result while November 7 for announcement of final result of the presidential election.
But due to some technical issues and problems during separation of clean and fraudulent votes, the IEC could not announce the result on its due date.
On October 27, the IEC said that primary result of the presidential election would be announced on November 14, but the commission again delayed the date for an indefinite of time.
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