KABUL - The Office of the CEO on Wednesday reaffirmed government’s commitment to conducting future elections in a free, fair and transparent manner while election observers and monitoring groups warned against past mistakes being repeated.
“One thing I want to assure the people about is that the upcoming elections will be much better than the previous one. We will not repeat the failed experience again,” said Jawed Faisal, deputy spokesman for the CEO.
Meanwhile, some election observers and election monitoring groups have warned government against repeating past mistakes.
“In the past there were problems in terms of delivering sufficient ballot papers and also security in certain areas was fragile; these problems must be the red lines and serious work must be done on these issues,” said Sayed Ekram Afzali, chairman of Integrity Watch Afghanistan.
In addition, the Independent Election Commission (IEC) has said that for the first time it has prepared the legal framework for the assessment of polling centers.
Wasima Badghisi, operational deputy of IEC, said the legal framework will further boost the credibility and legitimacy of the elections and it will help remove ghost polling centers.
She said that the new legal framework, which is the first of its kind in elections in Afghanistan, will determine the exact number of polling stations in each province.
“We have prepared the material for the assessment of polling centers; once the budget issue is finalized, we will start the assessment of the polling centers,” said Wasima.
“The election budget is dependent on the outcome of work on the assessment of an e-voting system, but a lot of effort has been done in this respect,” added Badghisi.
It is believed that the date for parliamentary and district council elections hinges on the decision regarding an e-voting system.
Two weeks ago a delegation started work on assessing whether an e-voting system could work in Afghanistan.
The delegation is expected to release the results of this assessment within a few days.(Tolonews)