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Election Monitors Unhappy With Handling of Abdullah Demands
[Tolo News]Election observers on Tuesday criticized the response of the Independent Election Commission (IEC) to the demands made by presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah... the former foreign minister of the Northern Alliance government, advisor to Masood, and candidate for president against Karzai. Dr. Abdullah was born in Kabul and is half Tadjik and half Pashtun... regarding electoral fraud in the runoff. Monitors emphasized that responsibility to resolve the current impasse in the process fell on election officials. Abdullah's team has presented the election commissions with six summarized demands, laying out the conditions for his return to the election process. The first recommendation was to conduct another round of voting in areas in which, according to the candidates, are under suspicion of ballot stuffing. Abdullah justified this demand with the audio recording evidence he has publicly released allegedly exposing a large-scale fraud plot coordinated by the former IEC Secretariat Chief, Zia-ul-Haq Amarkhail. The second demand was that votes from sites that were added for the runoff round but were not used during the first round in April be invalidated. Abdullah claimed the added sites were part of the scheme to disadvantage him in the second round. The election commission has rejected both of the first two demands tabled by the Abdullah team. Abdullah's third demand was that votes from suspicious sites be reinvestigated under the supervision of new Sherlocks representing the two candidates. To this request, the IEC agreed to review the sites and their results again but stressed that this would only be done with commission staff. The four demand was that a new IEC Secretariat Chief be nominated to replace Amarkhail, who reportedly left Afghanistan on flight bound for the United Arab Emirates with his family on Monday. The commission also refused this request, saying there was not enough time left in the process. The fifth demand was that an authorized delegation representing both campaign teams be nominated to be present during all decision-making processes of the election commissions. To this, the IEC emphasized that all meetings of the commission regarding election results are conducted in the presence of media and observers already. The sixth and final demand was for a new mechanism to investigate cases of fraud to be established. The IEC shifted responsibility and suggested the recommendation be brought up with the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC). Posted by: Fred 2014-07-02 |
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