Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Thursday, March 28th, 2024

IEC to Halt Audit Process if Candidates Do Not Reach Agreement

IEC to Halt Audit Process if Candidates Do Not Reach Agreement

KABUL - Officials of the Independent Election Commission (IEC) have said that the audit process will face challenges if the presidential candidates do not agree on the standard auditing procedures, which entails a checklist on what needs to be inspected.

The Deputy head of the IEC, Abdul Rahman Hotaki, urged the presidential candidates to finalize the technicalities of the audit as soon as possible otherwise the audit process will encounter disputes.

"Yesterday, we sent letters to both teams to agree on the procedure, otherwise the commission will decide based on its former procedure, or we will be forced to stop the audit process," Hotaki said.

Abdullah Abdullah's observers said that the absence of the finalized audit checklist has faced them with challenges, adding that they do not have an issue on their side claiming that rival Ashraf Ghani-Ahmadzai's team is who is stalling the process.

"We accepted the procedure with its details and are waiting for our rival team to sign it, unfortunately, our opponent has not yet signed it," said Mujiburrahman Rahimi, Abdullah's camp spokesman.

Former presidential candidate in the first round of elections, Daoud Sultanzoy, now a member of Ghani-Ahmadzai's teams, says that an agreement on the auditing method will be finalized end of Tuesday, stressing that the invalidation of votes must be in accordance to the audit process.

"Both candidates will agree on the matter today," Sultanzoy said. "But if votes are invalidated it should be based on IEC's procedure to ensure that discrimination is not allowed."

Mohammad Naeem Asghari, a program manager at the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA) said that, "the election is a national process and a global phenomenon as well. So holding a free and fair election needs to be according to the international standards, not according to the deference demands of a particular person and groups."

The officials of the commission also reported that increases of technical groups are needed to speed up the auditing process.

The commission added that since the start of the audits a total of, roughly, 700 ballots boxes have been audited by Tuesday afternoon illustrating that the plan to audit 1,000 boxes a day has failed. The IEC made a statement saying that at this rate the audit procedure will take several months. (Tolonews)