Selection Committee to Submit List of Nominees Less than 2 Months

After reviewing 722 applications, the finalized list of electoral commissioner candidates will be submitted to President Ghani in less than two months, the Selection Committee said.

A number of the Selection Committee members have called for government’s political support and stressed that government should prevent those who are eager to interfere in this committee’s affairs.

“We will submit the final list to the president up to the next two months and we urge the government to prevent the interventions,” said Yousuf Rashid, member of the selecting committee.

However, the electoral observing institutions accused the government of negligence to the future of elections and called holding election impossible in the upcoming year.

According to the constitution, the government must have held the parliamentary and district council elections on March 21, 2015, but due to delay in commencement of electoral reform process, the election date postponed.

Subsequently, the IEC announced August 14, 2016 as Election Day, but the announcement was made without any prior coordination with government.

After, postponement of election, the National Unity Government extended the working duration of parliament through a legislative decree to prevent parliamentary gap.

Scares from repetition of 2014 electoral challenges led the government consider electoral reform more important than election.

NUG established the Special Electoral Reform Commission (SERC) one and half year after the establishment of government.

Previously, CEO, Abdullah Abdullah said the National Unity Government is committed to bring reforms into the country’s electoral bodies in order to ensure transparent and free elections in the future.

The Electoral Reform is considered a crucial need of Afghans subsequent electoral distaste emerged after the former presidential election.

Nonetheless, the different position owned by the leaders of National Unity Government (NUG) is said to be the main reason for the delay.

Parliamentary elections are a very difficult challenge –given there are not set electoral rules –complicates the state of affairs. Without due electoral reform the conduction of parliamentary elections will be a difficult and challenging task.