In response to the ‘Stability and Partnership’ electoral team’s protests, the Independent Election Commission (IEC) on Saturday said its duty was to protect people’s votes independently as per the law and would never allow outside meddling.
Thousands of supporters of the Stability and Partnership election team, led by presidential candidate and incumbent CEO Abdullah Abdullah, on Friday staged a protest rally, asking the IEC and other related institutions to meet their legal demands.
The IEC, in a statement released on Saturday, termed the protest as citizens’ political right and important to institutionalization of democratic values.
The statement said IEC was legally responsible to hold elections throughout the country, protect people’s votes, and comply with electoral laws, regulations and procedures.
IEC, it added, has protected people’s votes based on the law and will never allow an individual or group to interfere in the polls process.
The electoral body assured all people and presidential candidates it will count only biometrically verified votes.
The statement urged political parties, particularly presidential candidates, to cooperate with IEC in completing the vote recount and audit process in the remaining seven provinces based on the law and procedure.
The body also called on citizens to be patient and cooperative until IEC announces preliminary results.
On November 9, the electoral panel started the audit and recount of votes from 8,255 of the 26,580 polling stations to filter fraudulent ballots from valid ones.
The move has drawn opposition from several candidates including Dr. Abdullah Abdullah and Gulbadin Hekmatyar.
The presidential election was held on September 28, with the preliminary and final result expected on October 19 and October 7 respectively.
In line with the IEC’s election timeline, the preliminary result was to be announced on October 19 while the final result was set to be out on November 7, but the process suffered delays due to late transfer of biometric data to the central servers.
IEC had said to announce the preliminary result on November 14, but failed to meet the deadline as well and the date for the announcement of September 28 presidential polls remained unknown since then.
