With less than a month left before the June 14 runoff election, the two presidential hopefuls, Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, made it clear on Tuesday that they want to see reform at the election commissions.
Engineer Muhammad Khan, the First Vice President of Abdullah, called for extensive reform to the Independent Election Commission (IEC) and Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) and demanded that all officials and employees thought to have been involved in electoral fraud be put on trial.
“Our first priority is transparency, then the shortcomings of the first round must not be repeated; the lack of ballots in many sites, fraud by commission staff, voiding votes without evidence, etc., were the shortcomings of the first round,” Mr. Khan said.
“This time, the election commissions must be neutral and those employees of the commissions as well as their officials who were involved in fraud and violations must be fired and put on trial,” he added.
Meanwhile, Ashraf Ghani spoke out himself and demanded election officials and security forces do more to prevent of fraud in the runoff.
“The IEC must maintain its effectiveness and must prosecute the candidates who were involved in fraud,” the former Minister of Finance said. He did not shy away from calling out individuals who he specifically held responsible for fraud in the first round.
“The Governor of Balkh, Mr. Atta Muhammad Noor, was involved in fraud,” Ashraf Ghani said. “We filed a complaint and it must be addressed, the Governor cannot act like a king and must follow the law.”
The presidential candidate, who received about 32 percent of votes in the first round, also enlisted his expectations for the election commissions during the runoff.
"Fraud must be prevented, there must be guidelines to prevent fraud, complaints must be addressed and transparency must be the result,” Ghani said.
“The IEC’s media commission must be active and should prosecute those media outlets that debase someone by calling them an infidel, and the security forces must also keep their neutrality,” he added.
Meanwhile, IEC Chairman Ahmad Yousuf Nuristani has assured the public that the runoff will be better than the first election.
“In a meeting that we had with both candidates, they asked for transparency during the second round; prevention of fraud by commission staff; transparency during vote counting; transparency and neutrality during the announcement of results; and security,” Mr. Nuristani said.
"There were some shortcomings in our work last time, but both we and candidates have learned lessons...we also asked them to ask the candidates to stop fraud, so we can work together for a transparent and acceptable election.”
Source/Fuente: http://www.tolonews.com/elections2014/candidates-demand-election-commiss...
