On June 14 – the day second round of election was held – everything seemed to be going normal until Kabul police chief, Gen. Zahir accused Zia Amarkhail, the head of IEC secretariat of trying to rig election. Reportedly, Amarkhail was transferring a large number of boxes filled with ballot papers to a neighboring district of Kabul in late hours secretly and without keeping security officials in the loop.

Alleged involvement of a high ranking official of election commission triggered concerns over transparency and fairness of election run-off. If proved guilty, Amarkhail will be the highest IEC official ever involved in electoral frauds. Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, the front-runner of first round of election, has already demanded Amarkhail’s suspension.

Soon after the polling was closed across the country, social media pages started filling with footages indicating massive frauds being done in the favor of a particular candidate. Meanwhile, statistics from certain provinces of Afghanistan indicate the number of votes casted is more than the number of legitimate voters and in some cases even more than the population of the whole province.

In its report released on Tuesday Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA) said it has noted 6,651 cases of frauds and incidents of irregularities on the Election Day. FEFA says its observers were not allowed to monitor the voting process in 176 polling stations. Meanwhile, the greatest number of complaints received by Electoral Complaints Commission is against the IEC employees. Out of 2,500 complaints submitted to ECC, 1,000 are against the employees of election commission. This is totally in contradiction to optimisms the IEC authorities have been exhibiting about their capability in conducting a free, fair and transparent election. 

The degree of electoral frauds and incompetency of electoral bodies is apparently so high that on Wednesday Dr. Abdullah ordered his election observers to stop their engagement in IEC main headquarter and provincial units immediately and announced to suspend all kinds of relations with electoral bodies. He accused President Hamid Karzai of utilizing the whole government system in favor of a particular candidate. Abdullah once more demanded action against Amarkhail and urged the process of counting votes must immediately be stopped.

Now if the situation continues in such a manner, Afghanistan will definitely fall into a severe political chaos. It is evident that electoral commissions have entirely failed to keep their autonomy and they seem to have acted upon the instructions of certain circles instead of Afghan constitution and electoral law. For any unwanted circumstances that may grab Afghanistan, these commissions will be responsible before the nation.