Lawmakers welcome voter’s registration launch

Monitoring Desk

KABUL: Some Wolesi Jirga members on Saturday welcomed official launch of the voter registration process and asked the government to accelerate national identity cards (CNICs)’s distribution. On Thursday, Gulajan Abdul Badai Sayyad, head of the Independent Election Commission (IEC), announced launching the voter registration drive from Saturday. He made the announced at a video conference with President Ashraf Ghani and provincial officials.

Sayyad had said the voters’ registration would be launched on April 14 and the commission had accelerated its efforts at holding “free, fair and transparent” polls. The voter registration process would complete in two phases — first in the cities and the second phase in districts centres and villages. Bashir Ahmad Tayanj, a lawmaker from northern Faryab province termed the voter registration’s launch “a positive beginning” for the Afghans and said the success of the process lied in greater participation of the masses. “Now the ball is in the public court, the masses should not miss their registration as voters, no lethargy please,” the lawmaker urged people.

He asked colleagues to encourage people towards participating in the process and deciding their future. Lower house member Khalil Ahmad Shaheedzada from western Herat province also welcomed the voter registration launch and asked the government to accelerate NICs distribution as well. However, he said all eligible people should have gotten their NICs before launching the voters registration process. “Currently most of the people who are eligible to vote are without NICs.”

Earlier, the Independent Election Commission (IEC) had inked an agreement with the Population Registration Authority (PRA) on distributing around 10 million paper type NICs also called Tazkera to those persons who are eligible for casting vote. The PRA had said daily 30,000 to 40,000 Tazkeras were being distributed country-wide and the authority had hired 4,900 new employees as well.

Ustad Mohammad Akbari, a lawmaker from Bamyan province, said around 40 percent eligible persons in Bamyan had no Tazkera. He warned if more attention was not paid the voter registration process might face problems. Second Deputy Speaker Amir Khan Yar, who chaired the session, asked the masses to participate in the polling process in order to make the future elections transparent and fair. “The success of voting process is related to public participation and the people should elect candidates who are eligible and have the ability and capacity to represent them.”