65% of complaints have supporting documentation: IECC

KABUL (TOLO News): The Independent Electoral Complaints Commission (IECC) said on Monday that 65 percent of registered complaints have documentation to back up claims. Complaints from five out of 34 provinces have been assessed.

Qutbuddin Roydar, a member of the IECC, said that 35 percent of the complaints have no documentation.

“The provincial commission decisions are not final; if someone has a complaint, the IECC has 15 days to assess the complaint by law– if five or six provincial commissions announce their decisions today and they are not acceptable to the person who lodged the complaints, they can lodge another complaint in three days,” added Roydar.

Meanwhile, Chaman Shah Etemadi, head of the secretariat of the IECC, said that they still do not have not access to the Independent Election Commission (IEC) database in 33 provinces, which is causing them many problems.

“Up until now, except for Kabul, all the provinces did not have access… we should provide them with user access– the secretariat vowed to provide accessibility,” added Etemadi.

Naiem Asghari, the deputy head of the Free and Fair Election Forum of Afghanistan (FEFA), emphasized the need for transparency in the election process and said the IECC faces many obstacles.

“Since the start of the investigation, the (IEC) commission did not provide user access to the (IECC) staff, and this inaccessibility is an obstacle and could delay the election process,” said Asghari.

Based on the law, the IECC has less than a week to assess all complaints and after that, it should share its decisions with the candidates.

Based on the IEC`s result initial results, President Ghani came in first during the preliminary round of the presidential election, but if the IECC finds approximately 12,000 votes of Ghani invalid, the election must go to a second round.