The 14th June run-off election created a political deadlock that could lead the country into a chaos and even another civilian war. The second round of election was massively rigged and the agony is that officials of Independent Election Commission (IEC) and government authorities were found involved in supervising ballot stuffing in favor of candidate of their choice.

Thankfully, with the mediation of UN and US authorities the election process is back on the track. It has been agreed that all the 8.1 million votes will be audited keeping in view international standards. This process will be overseen by foreign observers and ultimately clean votes will decide the next president of Afghanistan. The winner will form a national unity government which means the defeated candidate will also be given role in the government.

At such a point one thinks if the government and IEC had taken some effective and practical measures over the past five, the political deadlock could be avoided. But regretfully, the presidential palace handed all the electoral authorities to its hand-picked individuals. The autonomy of IEC and its sister organization Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) has always been doubted. And proven involvement of IEC Chief’s ex-aide Zia ulHaqAmarkhal in rigging election converted all doubts into a belief that electoral bodies are not impartial and work under direct influence of president’s office.

Another factor which led to massive electoral frauds is government’s lack of willingness to kick off issuance of computerized tazkiras (Afghan ID cards). Although ministries of technology and interior had long ago announced their readiness of issuing new cards, the concerned law required to start the process lingered for long first in the parliament and now at the president’s office.

Electoral frauds have appeared in a completely different forms and shapes in every election. The systems based on which the elections are conducted in the country are 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 and conventional 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 financial and technical opportunities to work on updating its systems and making them cost efficient. But it did not!

In order to permanently shut the door of deadlocks and crises, the new government has certain responsibilities. The foremost one is making the electoral bodies autonomous in true sense. Issuance of computerized tazkiras must kick off immediately. IEC must be able to issue computerized voter cards and must also update its systems using modern technology that can decrease chances of frauds as far as possible.