TOLOnews findings show that the 10 out of 14 presidential candidates who failed to get 10% of the nation’s will not get their one million Afghani deposit back from the state bank, by law, which they paid as a guarantee of their viability as a presidential candidate. 

The following candidates have achieved less than 10% votes in the election based on preliminary results which were announced on December 22.

•    Gulbuddin Hekmatyar 3.85%

•    Rahmatullah Nabil 1.86%

•    Faramarz Tamanna 0.99%

•    Sayed Noorullah Jalili 0.85%

•    Latif Pedram 0.69%

•    Enayatullah Hafeez 0.62%

•    Mohammad Hakim Torsan 0.36%

•    Ahmad Wali Massoud 0.22%

•    Mohammad Shahab Hakimi 0.18%

•    Ghulam Farooq Nijrabi 0.09%

•    Mohammad Haneef Atmar 0.09%

•    Noor Rahman Lewal 0.05%

“When these candidates ran for president, they brought 100,000 identity cards from their supporters and put Afs1,000,000 down as guarantee,” Election Commission’s spokesman Shaima Alam Sorosh said. “This amount will be added to the government’s treasury if they do not complete 10% of the vote.”

But according to the law, the government will return the warranty to those candidates who have taken more than 10% of votes.

“Only the two leading candidates---Dr. Ghani and Dr. Abdullah--will get their money,” said Naeem Asghari, deputy head of the Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan.

But some of the candidates accused the Independent Election commission of engineering the elections.

“The tally was made by the government and the commission. Votes from other candidates were used for the president,” presidential candidate Mohammad Hakim Torsan said.

The presidential election was held on September 28 and according to preliminary results, the total turnout was over 1.8 million.