Amended election law shared with stakeholders

KABUL (Pajhwok): The Independent Election Commission and the Independent Electoral Complaints Commission (IECC) during a national summit on Wednesday shared the amended Election Law with relevant stakeholders and asked them to share their inputs.

IEC Commissioner Mawlana Abdullah told the summit that the amended Election Law was not final and inputs from stakeholders would be included to the revised version of the law. Representatives of political parties and other relevant authorities participated in the summit.

“The available amended draft is not final, other stakeholders who are not present in the meeting after receiving the amendment draft law, can send their plans to the Ministry of Justice, the Legislative Section of the Council of Ministers and the Legislative Section of the Wolesi Jirga. It is possible to include and implement their inputs in the law,” he said. Esmatullah Mal, assistant IEC head, said that the Election Law needed to be amended and that seeking views of relevant authorities was vital in the process.

He asked the stakeholders to share their views while taking into consideration experiences from the past elections. Zahra Bayan Shinwari, IECC chief, said the views of political parties and other stakeholders were beneficial for the Election Law amendment. “Keeping in views the experiences from the past elections, share your views with us,” she said.

Mohammad QasimElyasi said ambiguity in existing terminologies, clarity in the voter lists, use of Computerized Identity Cards in elections, decreasing the number of candidates and fines were some of the points to be considered as part of introducing reform in the law. Khan ZamanMudabir, member of the Harakat-e-Islami Afghanistan, welcomed the IEC and IECC steps to introduce reforms in the election law and added that amending the election law was the need of the hour. The Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA) said they had submitted a detailed election plan to the commissions.