Monday, August 06, 2018
Kabul (BNA) The Independent Electoral Complaints Commission (IECC) on Sunday said that the timeline for disqualified election candidates to appeal the commission’s decision would end on Sunday and final decisions would be made from Monday.
The IECC’s committee was tasked to investigate reports of links between some candidates and illegal armed groups initially said 25 people had been dropped as parliamentary election candidates.
The list of names was released on Friday. But on Saturday the IECC said the decision was not final and the candidates were able to appeal their decision.
“Some of the candidates whose names are dropped from the list could be reinstated on the list, some of the candidates who were issued warnings could have their warnings reversed and instead face disqualification,” said the IECCs spokesman Ali Reza Rouhani.
Meanwhile officials from the Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan (IEC) have said that the work of the IECC has not been carried out in line with the electoral timetable and that delays have had an impact on the IECC’s performance.
“We need to prepare the (candidate) list from the beginning, we would need at least 35 days to send the list abroad for printing and bring them back and would need to pack them again and send them to the provinces, it means that this process would need time while we have very short time now.
We hope that our colleagues in the electoral complaints commission study the time-table again if they have not studied it correctly, based on the schedule, these are the ones who are supposed to give us the list,” said IEC commissioner Sayed Hafiz Hashemi.
Based on IEC statistics, over 2,300 candidates across Afghanistan have nominated themselves to run in the upcoming parliamentary elections scheduled for October 20.
The IECC’s special commission started assessing about 200 complaints against hopeful candidates last month. The commission later changed its mechanism of evaluation and assessed 137 complaints.
