Election oversight organizations on Saturday said the voting process to elect new election commissioners was transparent, but the elected individuals were not capable of leading or managing polls.
The new faces each explained their plans and programs during a three-minute time and then received votes from 17 presidential candidates during a meeting at the Presidential Palace on Friday and as a result, 14 figures who received most votes were elected for positions of election commissioners.
After the election of the new commissioners, the president has to choose seven of them as members of the Independent Election Commission (IEC), five as members of the Independent Electoral Complaints Commission (IECC) and two as secretaries of the two commissions according to the law. But heads, deputies and secretaries would be elected based on internal voting in the election bodies.
Pajhwok has obtained an 81-member list of the nominees including 66 figures introduced by political parties, 15 by civil society institutes. They also include 16 women seeking membership of the two electoral bodies.
Mohammad Naim Ayubzada, head of the Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan, called the voting process of new election commissioners as transparent, but said presidential candidates had entered agreements with the prospective commissioners before voting them and the election of new faces was not based on merit.
He criticized the presidential candidates for voting figures who lacked relevant experience and were mostly linked to political parties and candidates including President Ashraf Ghani, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah and Mohammad Hanif Atmar.
“This selection is a serious concern for us. If we go to the presidential elections with this structure, these figures have very little management skills and secondly they are linked with electoral tickets,” he said.
Ayubzada said the presidential elections would probably not take place in 2019 with the new structure due to a possible formation of an interim government.
Some commissioners received equal votes, but it was unclear how a decision was made to select one of them in such a case, he said.
Yousuf Rashid, head of Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FFEFA), said civil society groups were not invited to the voting process and that seven of the commissioners obtained equal votes.
He said it was not clear which standards were used to pick one from among candidates who had equal number of votes.
“Some presidential candidates did not know about the law; they somehow showed interest to interfere in the selection process and wanted to deal with things without involving the law, it was surprising,” he said.
Rashid said documents of the applicants were not properly reviewed as education documents of some were rejected by the Ministry of Higher Education, but it was unclear whether such individuals were among the winners.
“The voting on Friday was not based on merit and professionalism; it was a deal among presidential candidates and they chose specific individuals. We believe merit and ability have no value in this country and everything is decided based on deals which can have dangerous consequences,” he said.
