Ambassador Pierre Mayaudon, the European Union Head of Delegation to Afghanistan, in an interview with TOLOnews called on presidential candidates to respect the Independent Election Commission’s result and to prevent the 2014 election crisis from repeating.
“2019 Is quite different than 2014, I think the general public… aspires more every day to peace, stability and national unity,” said Ambassador Pierre Mayaudon.
The European Union’s ambassador referenced the tension of the 2014 election between Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, when neither won after two voting rounds and finally formed a national unity government under then-US Secretary of State John Kerry.
The EU ambassador in Kabul asked the electoral commissions to maintain their impartiality.
Mayaudon says that if the IEC takes too long to make a decision, the presidential election will turn into a crisis.
“A very important message that we communicated is really an encouragement to stay impartial and natural,” Mayaudon added.
The work of the IEC, particularly the transfer of information from biometric machines to the central database, is going slow.
The process of transferring information from the devices was supposed to be completed a day after the election, but now, about two weeks after the election, the process has not been completed.
Several members of the IEC have previously said that if the work of the IEC proceeds in the same way, the date of the announcement of the election results may be delayed.
Based on the timetable of the IEC, the preliminary results of presidential election are to be announced on October 19 and the final results will be announced on November 7.
Ambassador Pierre Mayaudon says the September 28 presidential election was good compared to the past elections.
“In the previous elections you had the ghost voters or fake ballots by hundreds of thousands if not by millions, this time… these frauds in such a dramatic dimension…have been avoided,” Mayaudon said.
The EU ambassador in Kabul considers technical problems, insecurity and lack of interest as the main reasons for the low turnout.
