KABUL - The Presidential Palace (ARG) said in a statement on Sunday that holding the parliamentary and district councils' elections is government’s top priority this year.
Meetings were conducted on financial aspects and security issues of the elections day, President Ashraf Ghani's deputy spokesman Shahhussain Murtazawi said in the statement.
“The most important priority of the national unity government this year is to hold the parliamentary and district councils' elections. Meetings were held on financial aspects and security of the elections,” added Murtazawi.
Meanwhile, a number of observers and electoral monitoring groups called on government to take robust action which could help to nourish transparency of the elections.
They said implementing the e-voting system and rolling out the electronic identity cards to Afghans could improve the credibility and fairness of the elections.
“Digitizing the elections will help to ensure transparency of electoral process, accelerate the process and announce the results in a short time,” said Sayed Ekram Afzali, head of Integrity Watch Afghanistan.
“How is it possible to digitize the election system in a short time? First, there is a need for the electronic identity cards to be rolled out, the digitalization of the election comes next,” said Fazl Ahmad Manawi, former head of the Independent Election Commission.
“This can help in the counting of votes including voter registration process, but it cannot ease the voting process,” said Jandad Spinghar, head of Afghan Civil Society Election Network.
This comes after reports said the United Nations in Afghanistan had reservations over different aspects of e-voting system in Afghanistan. (Tolonews)