The Lawyers Union of Afghanistan called on the presidential candidates to avoid making their way to the presidential palace through fraudulent votes on Tuesday at press conference.
Lawyers of the union said that the Independent Election Commission (IEC) violated not only the election law, but the constitution of Afghanistan in many areas of the election process in both rounds of elections.
“Leadership of the election commission acted against Article 61 of the constitution and the election law; they did not manage to conduct the elections in the specific timeframe detailed and delayed it for a month,” head of the Lawyers Union of Afghanistan, Abdul Ghafoor Ghayoor, said. “It’s quite clear they violated the constitution. In Article 13 item No. 6 of the law states that election commission memberships will be revoked and continuation of their job tenure is illegal.”
The lawyers stressed that presidential candidates should only demand that investigations begin for the cases of frauds and riggings if evidence can be provided.
The union raised the issue of IEC’s Secretariat Zia-ul-Haq Amarkhail and the allegations made about the transfer of ballots stating that if this claim can be proven true this act will be an electoral fraud.
“The action that was conducted by the IEC secretariat chief, if it had happened without the notice of the police, then it is against the agreement that exists between the police and the collection commission,” Secretary of the Lawyers Union, Ainuddin Nahaduri, said.
In past few days, there have been rumors and speculations in some regions about the lower or higher voter turnouts. The lawyers say that the sudden increase of voters in some parts of the country in the second round of the elections could be counted as an electoral fraud.
The IEC Chairman, Ahmad Yousuf Nuristani, prematurely announced that voter turnout in the runoff election was more than the 7 million from the first round. In contradiction to his statement, reports revealed the opposite as participation was delicate at some polling centers. Presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah said that he does not believe that more than seven million people voted in the runoff and the figure announced by the IEC is “unacceptable.”
Source/Fuente: http://www.tolonews.com/elections2014/lawyers-union-reviews-election-acc...
