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Observers Concerned Over 3,000 Insecure Polling Stations
“If we look into the polling stations graph, three thousand polling stations are located in those areas where there are high and medium security threats or even in areas out of the government control and it affects on people’s participation,” Yousuf Rasheed, the Chief Executive Director of Free and Fair Election Forum of Afghanistan (FEFA) said.
“We are worried about the capacity of the election commission and security of polling stations,” Naeem Ayoubzada, Head of Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan (TEFA) added.
At the same time, Pierre Mayaudon, the European Union (EU) Head of Delegation to Afghanistan on Wednesday said that the EU will not be able to have an observation mission in all major cities in Afghanistan due to the challenging security situation.
But he added if the EU is invited they would be keen to have some observers in the capital Kabul for the transparency and credibility of the elections.
In addition, Mr. Mayaudon said that the EU has allocated €50.5 million to the Afghan parliamentary and district council elections and have prepared another allocation of €15 million for the presidential and provincial council elections.
Maazullah Dawlati, IEC Commissioner told Ariana News that if we cannot ensure the security of polling stations, we cannot implement the voter registration process in the insecure areas.
This comes a day after the Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan (IEC) announced that the voter registration process will be launched in the center of all 34 provinces of the country on April 14, 2018. Earlier IEC said parliamentary election will be held in 20 of October this year.