President Ashraf Ghani on Thursday announced the appointment of Ahmad Shah Zamanzai to serve as head of the secretariat of the Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan (IEC), bringing an end to nine months of controversy. 
 
Zamanzai previously served as head of the budget and finance board of the ministry of finance. 
 
He is an economist by profession and has served in various positions in the Ministry of Finance (MoF), Pashtany Bank and the Ministry of Defense (MoD). 
 
But election watchdogs and monitoring groups have raised concerns over the appointment, saying Zamanzai has no experience in the management of elections. 
 
“The absence of a head of the secretariat led to some confusion over tasks, because work was not being done on time and in an authentic manner, we were suffering because of the absence of a professional chief,” said IEC commissioner Sayed Hafiz Hashemi.
 
“The decision made by ARG (Presidential Palace) is based on nepotism, the decision is not based on the national spirit. It is very difficult to promote credibility of the election process through such decisions,” said ex IEC chief Fazel Ahmad Manavi.
 
Meanwhile the IEC has fired the deputy head of the IEC secretariat and summoned IEC site chiefs for Herat and Jawzjan provinces to Kabul. 
 
Daud Daud is currently serving as head of IEC in Herat while Aman Habibi is in Jawzjan. 
 
Recently Awarangzaib, deputy head of the IEC’s secretariat was leading the IEC secretariat.
 
“The commission has decided to fire Awrangzaib from his post. Because he served here for a long time and was not carrying out his job properly,” said Hashemi. 
 
In October 2017, President Ashraf Ghani sacked Imam Mohammad Warimach, head of the Independent Election Commission’s (IEC) secretariat over ‘poor performance’. 
He was appointed to the post after he was interviewed by Ghani, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah and the second Vice President Mohammad Sarwar Danish.
 
Later, Shahla Haq, was appointed as the acting secretariat of the (IEC), but she resigned from her post on 14 May over the issue of stamping copies of ID cards. 
 
In her resignation letter to the IEC, Haq said the IEC chief’s decision to stamp copies of IDs of people who have registered to vote will pave the way for election fraud. 

Haq also said in her resignation letter that the plan is technically challenging, and the decision is not practical. She said as such she does not want to carry on in her position as she feels electoral fraud will damage the credibility of the elections.