KABUL (Pajhwok): The Independent Election Commission (IEC) on Tuesday postponed the special audit of suspicious votes due to absence of Independent Electoral Complaints Commission (IECC) observers.
On the other hand, IECC said the IEC did not share their programs with the commission for special audit of votes.
Habib Rahman Nang, secretary of IEC, told Pajhwok Afghan News that their commission was fully prepared for the special audit.
He said the audit process was expected to launch today, but postponed for absence of IECC observers.
However, Mohammad Reza Fayaz, IECC deputy spokesman, told Pajhwok that they did not receive the IEC’s plan for the vote audit.
He said the commission would task its observers with the audit process whenever they obtained IEC’s program.
On the other hand, election oversight institutes criticized lack of coordination among the two commissions and problems between the election bodies and said that negligence in the democratic process was at its peak and some figures were trying to intentionally create hurdles.
Yousuf Rashid, executive director of Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FFEFA), pointing to problems between the two commissions, said, “We see problems between the two commissions over minor issues on a daily basis.”
The IECC on February 5 asked the IEC to carefully audit and recount votes of more than 1,400 polling stations and only recount votes from 298 other polling stations.
Based on IECC’s decision announced a few days ago, 10 percent of 137,000 votes are suspicious and 15 percent of 102,000 votes which were cast out of time would be audited to find whether the votes were valid or not.
The presidential election was held on September 28. Final result of the election is yet to be announced. Based on initial results, Ashraf Ghani secured more than 50 percent of the votes while Dr. Abdullah Abdullah secured over 39 percent of total votes.
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