KABUL - Election monitoring groups on Sunday reiterated their criticism of the Afghan government for failing to move forward with the reform package on Afghanistan's electoral law.
They blasted leaders of the national unity government for wasting time in the process despite a strong democratic commitment demonstrated by the two leaders in the post-2014 presidential poll.
With the stalemate of work by the selection committee, the efforts vowed by the government over recent weeks appear to have gone to waste.
With the refusal of the president's legislative decree by the Afghan national assembly on electoral reforms, it seems that the efforts which had been stepped up by the government have amounted to nothing and the job of the selection committee has stalled.
"The deadlock of electoral reforms have raised serious concerns among the people, international community and monitoring institutions, the stalemate shows that the entire efforts multiplied by zero so far," Yousaf Rashid, head of Free and Transparent Forum of Afghanistan said.
Meanwhile, the selection committee has also criticized government for not taking steps to break the deadlock and go with the reform process.
"The members of the selection committee are quite concerned about the issue. The president had pledged to issue another decree in the near future, unfortunately implementing reforms in the election law seems to be out of the working agenda of leaders of national unity government," deputy head of selection committee Mohammad Naeem Ayoubzada said.
"As long as the electoral reform process is delayed, concerns of the people and international community will increase and the issue could raise more questions," the head of the electoral reform commission Shah Sultan Akifi said.
Although the presidential palace so far has not commented on it, president Ashraf Ghani's second VP Sarwar Danish has said that the president is looking to issue another decree by considering a number of changes in bid to implement necessary reforms on the election laws which will also help the selection committee to start its job with some changes.
Monitoring groups warn that consistent delays could undermine the timeframe for holding the nation's parliamentary and district councils elections. (Tolonews)