A member of the Independent Election Commission (IEC) has said that decisions in the electoral body are made by four members of the institution while three other commissioners are not consulted in the process of decision-making.

IEC commissioner Ma’azullah Dawlati said Najibullah Ahmadzai, Rafiullah Bedar, Abdul Qader Quraishi and Gula Jan Abdulbadi Sayyad are members of the commission who make decisions ‘secretly’.

“I want to tell you an example: when we wanted to introduce the head of the IEC secretariat, after the first test, and in the final phase, we did not held an official meeting to agree that which one of the three candidates will be introduced to the Presidential Palace. That issue was done between four people while other commissioners were not consulted,” Dawlati told TOLOnews.

The IEC spokesman Gula Jan Abdulbadi Sayyad refused to comment on these allegations.

Electoral monitoring organizations said rifts among election commissioners are rooted in interference by groups from outside into the IEC affairs.

“In terms of management, the commission has lost the necessary abilities to made decisions jointly and implement the reforms,” said Shah Mahmoud Mal, electoral affairs analyst.

“External factors are also involved in these disagreements. Government and a number of politicians also interfere in affairs of the election commission and such interferences have slowed down the activities of the electoral body,” said Habib ul-Rahman Nang, executive director of Free and Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan.

The remarks comes after another member of the commission, Maliha Hassan, recently talked about secret decisions and marginalizing of a number of IEC members.