KABUL - Officials of the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) announced that they have started the investigations of appeals in regards to the June 14 complaints, at a meeting in Kabul on Sunday.

The ECC emphasized that if presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah does not start direct talks and appeal to the decisions of the commission, they will assume that he concurs with it.

"From today on, we, as a judicial institution, have decided that absence of appeal will be considered as an agreement to the decisions of the ECC and legal decisions will be made in regard," Deputy Director of the ECC, Rida Azimi, said.

According to the officials, not cooperating with the electoral commissions will affect the validity of the commissions.

Director of the ECC, Abdul Satar Saadat, said the consultation of foreign agencies would be acceptable, if it is based within the framework of the law.

"All international institutions must respect the legal process of Afghanistan and show their legal support and must not politicize it," he said. "When these legal issues are challenged that is when Afghanistan faces crisis."

Saadat added that the IEC must act strictly and accordingly to the law as international communities begin to interfere in the process.

Presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah's electoral campaign team said the commissions' decisions would not be accepted. "We will not appeal anything and the results of the commissions' work will not be acceptable to us," Fazel Rahman Orya, a member of Dr. Abdullah's team, said.

But on the contrary, the campaign team of Ashraf Ghani-Ahmadzai welcomes ECC's stance, asking the commission to announce logical reasons behind the invalidated votes of any candidates.

"We welcome the addressing of appeals by the ECC and ask them to have clear reasoning when they announce votes that are invalidated," Noman Shinwari, a member of Dr. Ghani-Ahmadzai's team, said. (Pajhwok)