While Afghan government has constantly reiterated its commitment to hold the presidential election scheduled for September 28, the Independent Election Commission (IEC) says over a third of the polling stations will remain shut due to high security threats across the country. According to the electoral body, 4,942 out of about 7,000 polling centers will be open on the election day, indicating that people will be deprived of their suffrage in over 2,000 polling centers. Given the country’s security situation, Afghans will not dare to cast their votes even in the voting centers set to remain open. Although insecurity has always been a huge challenge to election in Afghanistan, this time the Taliban have threatened to attack election targets and gatherings, whose vast majority of participants are poor Afghan people. The Taliban threats can further drop the voter turnout.
In addition to security threats, the lack of respect for people’s vote in previous elections has further undermined public’s trust in the democratic process. The will of people expressed through votes did not shape the results of 2014 presidential election and 2018 parliamentary election. John Kerry’s mediation instead of millions of votes Afghan people cast while risking life and limb in the previous presidential poll defined the fate of the new government, while the scale of fraud in the Wolesi Jirga election was as large as it overshadowed the fate of the clean votes. The fraud in the previous parliamentary election was on an scale unprecedented in the history of election in Afghanistan.
The closure of over one-third of polling stations, which are located mostly in areas inhabited by ethnic Pashtuns, is of grave concern which can call into question the inclusivity of the election, a fundamental tenet of the democratic process. Any election void of this principle can bring the legitimacy of the new government under question. A government with no public support and a questionable legitimacy cannot extricate Afghanistan from the long-running, complex conflict. It would be better to provide all Afghan people with an opportunity to exercise their right to vote and elect their favorite leader, even if it required a delay in the election. That way, the masses would not feel alienated by the regime, and they would view the government as their own, and so would feel a responsibility to protect it.
