Kabul, Oct 19 (IANS) The Independent Election Commission (IEC) of Afghanistan on Saturday announced that the preliminary results of the September 28 presidential election will be delayed amid fears that candidates might not accept a possible defeat.
“The results of preliminary results will not be announced today, because the work on the votes processing and tallying still not completed,” IEC spokesperson Abdul Aziz Ibrahimi told Efe news on Saturday.
A new date for the announcement of the preliminary results is expected later on Saturday along with a detailed report on the work done by the commission so far.
“We still working on the new date,” he said.
According to Ibrahimi, the biometric data transfer which was delayed by four or five days led to, “one of the main problems that delayed the announcement”.
The spokesperson added that the IEC wants to complete, “the transfer of biometric data to the main server and the separation and filtration process of duplicated and other types of invalid votes will be started”.
The pressure on the Commission has increased in the last few weeks with reports of fraud and the technical issues the system faced.
With 15 candidates, during the last few weeks, the counting has been interrupted due to allegations and obstacles by the team of major aspirants, including incumbent President Ashraf Ghani his Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah.
Days after the voting took place, Ghani and Abdullah’s teams claimed victory in the elections.
While the rest of the candidates questioned the legitimacy of the votes given the low voter turnout.
Of the 9.6 million registered voters, only 2.7 million took part in the elections, making it the lowest attendance since the democracy was established in Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001 with the US invasion.
–IANS
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