The Independent Election Commission (IEC) was criticized by electoral monitoring groups and protesting candidates for a delay in the announcement of preliminary results of the parliamentary elections -- which were held on October 20.
Based on the election timeline, IEC was supposed to announce the preliminary results of the elections on November 10 and the final results on December 11.
The commission so far has announced the preliminary results for 30 out of 33 provinces.
“What has been done so far is neither the preliminary results announcement nor the partial results,” Ali Reza Rouhani, spokesman of the Independent Electoral Complaint Commission said.
A number of parliamentary elections candidates, people and electoral watchdog organizations criticized the election commission for not announcing the final results.
“People will have negative perceptions, especially when we have the presidential elections ahead,” said Farooq Baraki, a candidate from Kabul.
“We complained to the electoral commission repeatedly, but our voices were not heard. Takhar residents have no hope anymore on the electoral commissions,” said Habibullah Rustaqi, a candidate from Takhar.
“The election commission and the complaints commission are playing with the people’s destiny and have taken the election into crisis,” said Mahdi Mubashir, a Kabul resident.
An electoral monitoring organization said those who have caused delay in announcement of parliamentary elections’ results should be punished.
“The commission cannot make decisions on its operational activities and the decisions being dictated from inside government on them,” said Naeem Asghari, member of Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan.
The election commission meanwhile said delay in results announcement is for the sake of transparency.
“We have learned these lessons from October 20 elections and now we are working on how to bring reforms to these areas,” said Abdul Aziz Ibrahimi, a spokesman for IEC.
The results for Kabul, Paktia and Baghlan provinces as well as for Kochi and Hindus have not been announced so far.