KABUL - Nader Mohseni, the head of the Electoral Complaints Commission’s (ECC) Secretariat, on Sunday announced that a delegation had been charged with reviewing the bevy challenges from candidates who were disqualified from the preliminary list.

The ECC began reviewing complaints from the public against candidates as well as challenges from disqualified candidates at the start of last week. All 17 Presidential candidates who were eliminated and filed appeals, as well as some 400 would-be Provincial Council candidates, were met by the ECC to hear their objections to the ruling of the Independent Election Commission (IEC).

Following its announcement of the preliminary list of candidates two weeks ago, the IEC suffered an onslaught of criticism from disqualified candidates and civil society groups who accused it of opaqueness, flawed methodology and even political bias.

The ECC assured on Sunday that the concerns of candidates who were disqualified, which largely center on the issue of voter card verification, would be reviewed promptly and diligently by a special delegation.

 “Whoever has complaints about the actions of the IEC, the Complaints Commission will review them,” Mohseni said. “The majority of the challenges were about supporting voting cards and the commission has assigned a special delegation to review the challenges of those who objected to the elimination of their names.”

On Saturday, remarks made by ECC officials indicated that changes were coming to the final list of candidates expected to be announced on November 16. They suggested that based on the first week of the review process, it appeared some candidates who had made the preliminary list would not make the second cut, and some of those who were initially disqualified would be readmitted.

Presidential candidates were required to provide 100,000 supporting voter cards from voters around the country during the nomination phase to show they had a support base. Provincial Council candidates were asked to provide only 600.

According to IEC officials, invalid voter cards were the primary reason for the sweeping cuts that were made for the preliminary candidate list. However, those who were disqualified have since voiced disagreement with the IEC’s findings, claiming there must have been technical issues or mistakes on the part of the Commission.

Although the IEC has acknowledged that there were some technical issues with their database of voter cards that was used to verify the legitimacy of the ones submitted by candidates, Commission officials have downplayed those problems.

 “I don’t want to say that we did not have technical problems, but they were not major ones,” IEC Commissioner Sarir Ahmad Barmak said. “The legal decisions of the ECC will be acceptable for us.”

With all the murkiness around the IEC’s vetting process, and the debate over whether or not the thousands of voter cards that were submitted were legitimate, it is no wonder why the ECC has dedicated a special group to clearing the air. The Complaints Commission already has 650 complaints from the public against candidates who did make the preliminary list to review in addition to the challenges.

Still, even with all that workload, the former IEC chief Fazl Ahmad Manawee was hopeful the ECC would correct any mistakes made by the IEC.

 “What the IEC could not to do, we hope the ECC can do,” he said. (Tolo News)