KABUL - Lawmakers in Parliament on Saturday reinforced calls for heightened security in the lead up to June's runoff election, also urging election commission officials to prevent the mistakes of the first round from being repeated.

The representatives praised the performance of the Afghan security forces for keeping voters, candidates and officials safe throughout the first round process.

However, there was no such praise for the election commissions, which lawmakers butted heads with in past weeks over vote counting and fraud investigations.

Concerns were expressed on Saturday about an increased threat from the Taliban during the runoff. The June 14 vote will fall right in the middle of the summer fighting season.

"The election has gone to a second round, and there are fears that the enemy will challenge peace and stability in Afghanistan and disrupt the election," Speaker of Parliament Abdul Rauf Ibrahimi said.

"The enemy want to deprive the people of selecting their president according to the Constitution and transfer of power from one elected president to another, so we ask the Afghan security forces to once again demonstrate their capability and maintain security for the runoff."

Other MPs set their sights on the election commissions, urging them to handle fraud better than they did in the first round, by the end of which some 230,000 votes were invalidated.

"We hope that genuine votes are separated from fake votes in the second round and dishonest staff are reined in so that the runoff is conducted in a free and transparent manner," Balk MP Humaira Ayoubi said.

Although election officials have assured that issues like delayed poll openings and ballot shortages that proved such a problem in the first round would be better handled in the runoff, MPs on Saturday were keen to remind them of their expectations.

"The issues that we faced in the first round must be avoided in the second, we hope that ballot shortage are not witnessed in the second round," Kandahar MP Shekeb Hashimi said.

MPs also took time to criticize the delays that put the second round behind schedule. Despite the law requiring election officials to do so, the runoff will not be held two weeks after the final results were announced. (Tolonews)