A number of protesting candidates have set up a protest tent near the Afghan presidential palace for the past one month.

Protesters accuse the government of engineering the October parliamentary election and urges for the creation of a special court to assess the electoral violations.

“Instead of giving a positive response to our demands, President [Ghani] ordered the interior ministry to remove our protest tents by force and they beat us,” said Arezo Safi, a protesting candidate from Kandahar province.

“We want a special court for the electoral violations because we have documents showing that we are the winners of the election,” said Heela Mujtaba, another protesting candidate from Paktika.

Meanwhile, electoral observers emphasis that legal solutions are available to solve this problem.

“Their voice must be heard and this protests must end. There are legal solutions to resolve such issues,” said Fazel Ahmad Manawi, former Chief of Independent Election Commission.

“Unfortunately, the government is ignoring the protesters and their demands,” said Marwa Amini, spokesman of the Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan (TEFA).

Afghanistan’s parliamentary election was held on October 2018 after a three-year delay but it was followed by widespread challenges.

It took electoral bodies seven month to finalize the controversial results of parliamentary elections.