In less than ten days, the second round of presidential election will be held in Afghanistan – the first in country’s history. There is high expectation from the Independent Election Commission (IEC) to perform better this time in conducting a free, fair and transparent election. On April 5th, two elections one for the presidential seat and the other for seats of the provincial councils were held. Given the large number of candidates, the elections were not flawless and serious instances of mismanagement were observed during and after the polling day.
One major issue faced by the voters, for example, was shortage of ballot papers in certain provinces of Afghanistan including Kabul. Meanwhile, the way electoral bodies dealt with its employees who did not keep their impartiality and government authorities who directly meddled in the voting process has not been satisfactory at all.
IEC authorities describe the first round of presidential election as an event that has given them invaluable experience and that they are looking forward to perform better in the run-off election that is scheduled forJune 14. But there has been a difference of cheese and chalk between how they talk and how they walk. As stated, no action has been taken against those IEC employees and government authorities who forced the people to vote for a particular candidate on the Election Day. Therefore, there is no guarantee that such incidents will not happen again.
Electoral frauds may appear in a completely different form. The system based on which the elections are conducted in the country is all based on papers except for the quantity of votes that is entered in IEC’s database after votes in ballot boxes are counted. Such an out-dated system increases the chances of electoral frauds up to a great level.
For conducting an election, the electoral bodies spend millions of dollars each time. It is absolutely difficult for Afghanistan to conduct an election without financial support from the international community. In the last five years, the IEC had the best opportunity to invest on updating its systems and making cost efficient. But it could not even issue computerized voting cards which is regretful.
Recent experiences have shown that the people of Afghanistan are great supporters of democracy. Since election is one of the major pillars of democracy, the organization responsible for conducting it must be impartial and equipped with modern technology so that elections can be conducted in a truly free, fair and transparent manner.