Election observers from two leading monitoring organizations on Tuesday questioned the presidential candidates’ registration process and claimed that “none of the candidates” met the requirements and pre-conditions for running as president.
Based on the election law, each candidate has to prepare 100,000 national identity cards and submit it to the election commission, but members of the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA) and Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan (TEFA) said “none of the candidates fulfilled this requirement properly”.
“The documents (national ID cards) should have been from a few provinces and fingerprints of 100,000 voters should have been submitted to the election commission, but this has not been checked and assessed. We have information that shows a number of candidates who failed in the parliamentary elections, made a decision in social media to run for presidential elections,” said Yusuf Rasheed, CEO of FEFA.
“The process was done very secretly, it was political expediency. Indirect reports received by us show that there were problems in the process, in the issue of identity cards, signatures and citizenship. The commission made the decision about the candidates without completing a proper process,” said Naeem Ayubzada, CEO of TEFA.
The Independent Election Commission (IEC), meanwhile, said the nomination process has been carried out based on procedures and that there is not any serious problem.
“All the issues and documents have been assessed based on the electoral bodies’ procedures,” Rahima Zarif, a commissioner of IEC, reiterated.
The electoral complaints commission has the authority to remove the name of any candidate from the list if it was proved that he has failed to meet the requirements.
Eighteen candidates, including President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, are running for president in September 28 polls.