Election seems to have become an irresolvable challenge for Afghan institutions. After almost two decades of experience of democracy, Afghanistan’s election bodies — the Independent Election Commission (IEC) and the Independent Electoral Complaints Commission (IECC) — have not yet acquired the necessary capacity and experience to conduct truly transparent and fair elections. The 2014 and 2019 presidential and 2018 parliamentary elections showed that IEC and IECC are yet to gain the trust of all electoral stakeholders.
Since the announcement of the election timeline, the current IEC leadership has always kept saying that the electoral institutions would remain committed to the schedule this time, and carry out all their operations accordingly. However, they, as usual, have failed to honor the promise, and not only could not announce the preliminary results on time but have also been unable to set a new date for it even a month after the election was held. IEC faces so many challenges and lacks a capable leadership that even cannot dare announce a new timeline, because it is unable to correctly estimate the turnaround time of its operations and be able to announce the preliminary results.
Postponement of the announcement of election results is not in the best interest of the country as it allows the leading presidential tickets to unreasonably challenge the outcome of the election on the one hand and paralyzes the government on the other hand. When the legitimacy of government leadership is in question, officials do not feel a responsibility, thereby leading to a state of anarchy and outlawry within the state, something Afghanistan cannot afford in the current critical situation
Election commissions must understand their responsibilities and avoid postponing the election results any longer. Afghanistan has many priorities to which keen attention should be paid immediately after the inception of the new government. The peace process is one of them. The United States is about to restart the stalled peace negotiations with the Taliban. Before a peace deal is struck between the two sides, Afghanistan needs to have a new legitimate administration that can engage in the intra-Afghan talks with a united stance, and defend the gains of the last two decades.