IECC has not finalized decision on 300,000 disputed votes

KABUL (TOLO News): Mohammad Qasim Elyasi, the spokesman of the Independent Electoral Complainants Commission (IECC), said they will make a decision about the 300,000 disputed votes soon.

Some election campaign team consider the 300,000 votes “fraudulent,” and urged the IECC not to count them.

Previously, the Independent Election Commission (IEC) invalidated approximately 86,000 votes out of 300,000 disputed votes, and also invalidated the votes of 2,000 polling stations out of 2423 polling stations that had discrepancies or other issues with the corresponding biometric data, or which came from polling stations without working biometric devices on polling day.

“If we could share the result with you on the upcoming Sunday and Monday via press conference, after that we will tell you the reasons for the delay,” added Elyasi.

President Ghani achieved 923,868 votes in the first round of the election that was held on September 28, 2019, and if more than 12,000 votes for Ghani are determined to be fraudulent then the election will go to a second round.

“We registered an appeal because we expected that our votes would be more,” said Ajmal Hodman, a member of Ghani’s campaign team.

Abdullah Abdullah is the second leading candidate of the election, and earned 720,990 votes in the past election.

“By assessing our legal complaints only in Kandahar province, 34,000 votes of Ghani will be announced false, the election is going to a second round, and by one complaint the result will be changed,” said Noor Rahman Akhlaqi, a member of Abdullah’s team.

However, election observer institutions are concerned about political pressure on the IECC.

“Efforts are underway to influence the future of Afghanistan politically–we are concerned about that,” said Zubair Habibzada, spokesman for the Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan (TEFA).

Samira Rasa, spokesman for the Free and Fair Election Forum of Afghanistan (FEFA), said: “We hope the IECC will announce its decision about the 300,000 votes based on law.”

Four months ago the presidential election was held in Afghanistan, but the final results have not been announced yet.

Based on the law, the IECC should send its decisions to the IEC in the upcoming week, and the IEC should announce the results based on the IECC decisions.