KABUL - Ahead of the expected arrival later this week of some 50 additional United Nations election advisors to help Afghan authorities with the ongoing comprehensive audit of the ballots cast in Afghanistan’s Presidential run-off elections, a senior UN official has said that the world body has got the "balance right" while playing its “tiebreaker” role in the process.

“Afghans wanted us to assist them and we have accepted it,” the UN Secretary-General’s Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan, Nicholas Haysom, said in an interview. “Inevitably, we will draw criticisms from both sides to the extent that we have drawn some sorts of criticisms, and you can see it in the tweets. I think we have more or less got the balance right, that both [candidates] appreciate our role but both sides have criticisms as well.”

The United Nations was jointly requested by the two Presidential candidates, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah and Dr. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, and also separately by the authorities of Afghanistan, to carry out its current role of coordinating international supervision of the audit of the results from the 14 June elections run-off.

At the same time, the UN also plays the direct role of providing technical assistance and advice to the country’s two election bodies, Independent Election Commission (IEC) and the Independent Electoral Complaints Commission (IECC).

On Sunday, UN experts tested software which the IEC will use in the adjudication process of the audited ballots, separating valid and invalid votes. The IEC said today that, after installing the software in 400 computers, it will start the adjudication later this week.

Currently, more than 200 international election experts and observers from a number of international organizations – including the UN, the European Union and the United States – have been working with the IEC, national observers and candidates’ agents in auditing 22,828 ballot boxes, consisting of approximately eight million ballots. The IEC said today that 6,393 boxes have been audited so far.

Calling the exercise “a huge undertaking,” Mr. Haysom – a veteran of constitutional reform, electoral reform, conflict resolution, good governance, and democracy-strengthening in several countries in Africa and Asia – noted that he could not think of another place where a similar exercise had been undertaken “in such detail and with such huge inputs” from the international community and domestic observers.

“We, for our part, have had to engage in a massive exercise to increase the numbers of staff here, particularly at the huge exercise taking place,” the UN official added.

In an agreement, negotiated in part by the UN, both the candidates have vowed to form a government of national unity which includes both the winning and losing teams. UN officials have previously said that any delay or uncertainty in the elections process would affect the country’s political and economic future.