Afghan Presidential hopefuls start their poll campaign

4 Feb 2014

Afghan Presidential hopefuls start their poll campaign

4 February 2014 – The eleven Presidential candidates contesting the 5 April Afghan elections started their political campaign on Sunday, with billboards and banners dotting major Afghan cities, including the capital, Kabul.

According to the timeline set by the Independent Election Commission (IEC) of Afghanistan, the presidential campaign, as well as the campaign for 420 Provincial Council seats that is set to start on 4 March, will end 48 hours before the polling day.

“We have set three conditions for them (candidates) that they should conclude their campaign 48 hours before the polling; should not provoke ethnical, lingual and religious issues during their campaign; and should honour the ceiling of expenditures that have been set at 10 million Afghanis ($178,500),” said the spokesperson of the IEC, Noor Mohammad Noor.

The UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), Ján Kubiš, has called upon the Afghan security forces to be on heightened vigilance over the coming weeks leading to the elections.

Mr. Kubiš issued this call on Sunday in the wake of the killing of two members of the election campaign team of one of the presidential candidates, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, in the western Afghan city of Herat.

“This cowardly action constitutes a violent intimidation of electoral candidates and their supporters, and cannot be tolerated. The people of Afghanistan should be able to exercise their fundamental right to express their democratic will and to vote in an atmosphere free of intimidation and violence,” Mr. Kubiš said in a statement.

Following the request of the Afghan authorities, UNAMA has been mandated to support the organization of future elections as well as to strengthen, in support of the Government’s own efforts, the sustainability, integrity and inclusiveness of the electoral process, and provide capacity building and technical assistance to the Afghan institutions involved in this process.

UN officials have previously described the upcoming elections, which will mark Afghanistan’s first ever transfer of power from one elected president to another, as critical to the country’s future stability and continued international support.