The Independent Election Commission (IEC) said they will start counting votes from this weekend’s parliamentary elections on Wednesday in Kabul. 

On Tuesday, election commission officials said all election materials, including the preliminary results, have been transferred from polling centers to the provincial capitals. 

IEC spokesman Sayed Hafizullah Hashemi said they will start counting votes, from all polling centers around the country, in Kabul on Wednesday. 

“Vote counting has been finished at polling stations and polling centers. Tomorrow vote counting will start,” said Hashemi. 

Hashemi also said the election commission will inaugurate an information gathering center on Wednesday. 

“All political parties and media can come to the commission tomorrow and visit the center. We will inaugurate the center tomorrow,” said Hashemi. 

The election commission said results of parliamentary elections will be announced on November 6.

In the meantime, a number of election watchdog organizations said if the vote counting process is managed in the same way as the elections were - on Saturday and Sunday – the results will not be credible. 

The watchdogs said the management of the elections had been poor as there had been many problems on election days. They said there should be no problems during the vote counting process.

“If vote counting is managed as the election day (was managed), what has been expected will not be gained,” Naeem Ayubzada, executive director of Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan said.

“Problems with the biometric system show that the commission managed the election process poorly. These problems should not be repeated in the vote counting and the commission should not make promises to the people that it cannot fulfill,” Yusuf Rasheed, executive director of Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan said.

Afghanistan’s long-awaited parliamentary elections were held on Saturday, October 20, and at some polling centers on Sunday, in 32 provinces of the country. However elections in Ghazni were postponed a few months ago due to security issues and Kandahar elections were held over for a week following last week’s assassination of the provincial police chief Gen. Abdul Raziq.