KABUL - The Independent Election Commission (IEC) announced prior to the start of auditing that the commission was determined to investigate 1,000 ballot boxes a day, but in the past five days of inspection a total of 600 boxes have been audited.

The IEC has failed to fulfill their systematic plan of auditing 1,000 boxes a day; they are behind by 4,400.

The monitors for the presidential candidates have expressed their concerns over the slow and inefficient process stating that at this rate it will take months for investigations to be over.

A member of Ashraf Ghani-Ahmadzai's monitoring team, Mohammad Gulab Mangal, said that the process must be faster by "enhancing the team to speed up the process, otherwise the audit will take several months."

Sharing similar concerns to the speed of the process, a member of Abdullah Abdullah's observation team, Amirullah Aman, said that the "IEC has invited its provincial staff who are not familiar with the auditing process, which have slowed down the process."

On the opposite spectrum of reasons behind the time-consuming procedure, official from the IEC say the candidates' monitoring teams are not trained nor understand the details and protocol of the audits.

"A number of the candidates' observers do not understand the technicalities of the audits and neither are they trained this is what is causing the snail-like auditing," IEC Spokesman Noor Mohammad Noor said.

"Besides this, there is not enough international observers in Kabul, so if we have to enhance our team."

Noor added that in the past five days of audits there have been suspicious boxes, mostly from Kabul, that will be closely investigated to decide the fate of the ballots in those boxes.

A member of Abdullah's team asserted that only the United Nation (UN) is allowed and responsible to invalidate ballots, not the IEC.

Before the start of the audit process, the election commission had announced that they will form 100 groups that will inspect a total of 1,000 boxes a day. In retrospect, only 600 ballot boxes have been audited in the past five days. (Tolonews)