Afghan election monitoring groups and the United States Embassy in Kabul on Thursday welcomed the announcement of the final results from the presidential vote. Looking ahead to the second round runoff, observers said they hoped the mistakes of the first round would not be made again.
In particular, Afghan civil society members were adamant about the Independent Election Commission (IEC) being better in its vetting of employees and the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) being more efficient in its work.
“We hope the challenges are not repeated in the runoff,” Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan (TEFA) Chairman Mohammad Naeem Ayoubzada said on Thursday. “The ECC should try to investigate the complaints on time, and the IEC should not recruit employees who worked in favor of particular candidates in the first round…”
The front-running candidates registered complaints about the lack of ballot papers on Election Day, the failure to seperate clean votes from fraudulent ones and address all complaints filed with the ECC. A number of candidates asked the IEC repeatedly not to announce the results before addressing all of the complaints, but to no avail.
Observers at the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA) also stressed the importance of correcting the mistakes made during the first round.
“The IEC employees that were involved in fraud should be dismissed, but beside that, the lack of ballot papers and late opening of some voting centers were among the challenges in the first round,” FEFA spokesman Fahim Naeemi said.
The European Union Assessment Team also welcomed the final result of the April 5 election and called for greater transparency in the runoff round.
The monitoring groups said they would be prepared to observe the runoff set to take place on June 14.
The United States Embassy in Kabul released a statement on Thursday and said the final results were a milestone in the development of democracy in Afghanistan.
The U.S. embassy congratulated Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, but reaffirmed that the U.S. would continue to support the general process and not a particular candidate.
The general public also welcomed the results announce on Thursday, and expressed a bold preparedness for the runoff round.
“We need security and peace, that is why we will take part in the election runoff to select our future president,” Zabul resident Sakhi Gul told TOLOnews.
“Although there are chances that anti-government threats might increase as elections getting closer, we should ignore these threats and take part in the election,” Helmand resident Shafiullah said.
Source/Fuente: http://www.tolonews.com/elections2014/reactions-elections-final-result
